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Thanks for your reply. My main point is that we are a tech / start-up community, and we should strive to keep it that way, by keeping propaganda (in this case

• rntn 5y ago
  Thank you again for your reply, I have endeavored to address the points you made individually, as follows : -+-+--+-+--+-+--+-+- "My main point is that we are a tech / start-up community, and we should strive to keep it that way, by keeping propaganda (in this case western) out of it as much as possible." -+-+- Your aim of keeping propaganda out of this forum is laudable, as it is in any communication forum. It is common to feel that propaganda is among those terms, like politics, pornography, etc, that one simply knows when they see it, but, clearly, a precise definition is called for: This is the relevant section of Merriam Webster's definition : "- The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person. - Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause also a public action having such an effect. - An organized spreading of often false ideas or the ideas spread in such a way. " https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda Hopefully you won't think my use of copy/paste here is, as you put it " low effort"; I have only resorted to it in this thread when I felt that the more concise "RTFM" was either insufficient or clearly unheeded. Now, by the previous definition of propaganda, I ask - yet again - what reasoning do you have for claiming that the Guardian article we are discussing here is propaganda? You have not presented any evidence to support your claim, rather, you have linked to imgur graphics and a HN query which, to the contrary, serve only to demonstrate the spike of interest in - and hence the relevance to - discussion in this forum of the issues occurring now in Russia and China. I see that you are attempting to claim that your previous post is "final" even as you make your claims, but, nevertheless, I am genuinely interested in hearing your reasoning behind your claim that the Guardian article was Western propaganda.. -+-+--+-+--+-+--+-+- "You can replace The Guardian with <publication> and my initial comment still stands, "a quote from <publication>'s about page? This is hilarious". Do you think Russian media outlets have about pages where they mention the (mis/dis)-information they are peddling? Hilarious. As above, the fact that <entity> writing about <entity> and using that as an argument is... hilarious." -+-+- I am grateful for the clarification about your personal "disclaimer", as to the disclaimer on Russian media outlets as contrasts to the Guardian about page (or similar at any reputable journalistic site), these must be taken on a case by case basis, and subjected to scrutiny. This is precisely what is done with technology publications to distinguish independent, well researched and documented sources from, say, corporate mouthpieces hyping vaporware. All professionals are routinely tasked with making such distinctions in their careers - they most certainly do not hide behind whataboutisms equating/conflating corporate or government mouthpieces with serious journalism, tech or otherwise. That is my reason for posting the one from the Guardian in reply here on this thread. It stands up to scrutiny, as do those on any source that I post from here or use professionally. As you correctly intimate above, the ones from Russian (and Chinese for that matter) state sources are risible.. -+-+--+-+--+-+--+-+- "I am not accusing you of such a thing. I am accusing you of bringing in propaganda to this tech forum. Willingly or not. I don't know, nor care." -+-+- Absent any well reasoned justification subsequent to this, I can only conclude that you have accepted that the article is clearly not propaganda in any way shape or form. Please see my discussion of your main point above. -+-+--+-+--+-+--+-+- " This is exactly my point. I am not interested, on this particular forum, in discussions that go below 'evidence of some interesting new phenomenon'. In this current context, I don't care about your obviously western geopolitical stance, your sources and how many languages you are comfortable with. I care about not bringing this kind of propaganda to the forum. " -+-+- Ibid. -+-+--+-+--+-+--+-+- I am glad to see that my previous reference has sent you to the HN guidelines, and, I concur with YOUR copy/paste that : " Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" So, let's take a look at the article we are discussing here.. The article stated that: "The Doublethink Labs report pointed to content sharing agreements between the two countries’ state media, decisions by Chinese censors, influential social media accounts and government directives regarding coverage, as all contributed to driving public support for Russia’s attack, despite the Chinese government’s nominal stance of neutrality. Prior to the invasion, there was little discussion of Russia’s claimed need to “denazify Ukraine” until hostilities broke out, the report said. But the speed with which disinformation spread revealed, “the ease with which Sino-Russian state media cooperation can sow disinformation by citing each other as sources and expanding on each other’s angles”. Again, I'm happy to go into the details of Doublethink Labs activity in English or Chinese if you want, but, as a technology researcher involved in multilingual semantic analysis, this strikes me as very solidly within the scope of "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon".. The article further stated that : "Charlie Smith, cofounder of Greatfire.org, a censorship monitoring site, said “Nazi” had long been identified as a keyword on most censorship lists for Chinese internet companies. “Usually once a word ends up on that list, it very rarely comes off,” he said. “Sometimes what is not being censored can be more telling than what is being censored.” " This evidence of selective filters within the Chinese government surveillance infrastructure, as well as the disinformation correlates available for analysis between the Russian and Chinese propaganda (and I use the term here advisedly) are both areas of significant technological and research interests, at least from the perspective of semantic analysis, to say nothing of behavioral cybernetics.. I do apologize if these areas are not so interesting to you (your comments nonwithstanding) but you might consider that, as the graphics and textual analysis you linked to in your previous reply clearly show, there is, in fact, a great deal of interest in these topics here at HN. I look forward to your reply.