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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @06:30PM (#20690913)
What I saw in the video is violent protestors beating someone brutally. Could you please elaborate a bit how it comes to be disinformation?

By the way, you’re unlikely to convince anyone with personal attack.

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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @07:08PM (#20691173)
1. define enemy and prove the victim is. 2. are you suggesting protesting is a war which “perfectly acceptable” to use any violence at will?
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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @08:16PM (#20691557)
Are you suggesting the victim is "oppressors" to the protestors? Or, are you suggesting anyone from "The state of China" should be tagged as "enemy"? How do you define "willing supporters"? Did the victim attack protestors? How comes slaughter a human being (even if an enemy) becomes natural right in a civilized society?
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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @02:59PM (#20698801)
> Anyone from China who given the chance does not surrender is fair game.

Given what chance? from whom? Surrender to whom? It seems there's some authority that ppl have to comply with, and they should be "slaughtered" if not? This doesn't sound like democracy at all.

> If a party you have no prior social contract with endevours to threaten your existence you have every right to threaten theirs. Such people are undeserving of civility.

Who is threatening your existence? Is the victim in the video threatening anyone?

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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Thursday August 15, 2019 @12:23AM (#20702565)
> I don't care for democracy.

Nothing to say about this :-) Just FYI I care democracy & so do HK ppl.

> No one atm, I just think China should be wiped off the map and its leaders executed in public.

The last person I knew who tried to wipe several countries off the map and execute its ppl is a poor German. Though he did write a book to defend his idea which is "persuasive" somehow. I'd suggest you start from there.

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by faissaloo on Thursday August 15, 2019 @04:51AM (#20703635)
>Just FYI I care democracy

And yet somehow that feels untrue.

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Thursday August 15, 2019 @02:14PM (#20708011)
It doesn't matter at all as long as the democracy I care about is not about killing ppl at will.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by faissaloo on Thursday August 15, 2019 @04:05PM (#20709095)
People will die either way. Some people are more deserving of death than others.
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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by minwell on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @09:21PM (#20691910)
Sorry, I thought in HN everyone has equal right to discuss on facts regardless his/her account is created today or ... 5 months ago.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by wtdata on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @04:42AM (#20693725)
Oh, they normally are, it's just that it's suspicious, that so many of them are being created with the single purpose of participating in a thread, that talks no less than about China's disinformation machine.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @03:07PM (#20698872)
As long as we want to eliminate "disinformation", it's good that different opinions from different perspectives occur in this thread. To be honest, if a thread about a global political affair has only one sound, it's disinformation to me as well. Ppl could believe in sth in common and share common value, that's why we have right to protest if the value is under compromise; but ppl could also have different opinion and every right to express the opinion, that's why we have HN.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by wtdata on Saturday August 17, 2019 @03:20PM (#20725773)
Sure it is, but, it is really, really funny you have to create so many new accounts to do it, and all of them defending exactly China. I.e. the autocratic government under the suspicion of using its disinformation machine to manipulate us.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by dang on Sunday August 18, 2019 @01:34PM (#20731592)
Please don't break the site guidelines by posting insinuations of astroturfing, shilling, spying, or other abuse on HN. If you think you're seeing abuse, the guidelines ask you to email [email protected] so we can look into it.

I've posted a zillion explanations of this if you (or anyone) want more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by sniperjzp on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @05:28PM (#20690461)
I post a comment like once a month, how could this be "active"? I used the username since high school, any problem with it? I just came back from HK right before the airport protest, if you don't believe what people said, go to check it by yourself.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by amaccuish on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @05:56PM (#20690667)
"Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by BubRoss on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @08:24PM (#20691598)
There is OBVIOUS astroturfing going in this thread. Is it really accomplishing anything to stick our head in the sand?
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by dang on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @02:56AM (#20693269)
You've broken the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously with comments like this. We ban accounts that do that. Please do not degrade HN by posting any more like this.

Comments like this poison the commons badly. The overwhelming majority are pure imagination, born out of humans' inability to listen to others with different perspectives from their own. If you have any evidence for the accusations you're making, send it to [email protected] so we can investigate, as the guidelines ask. Comments you strongly disagree with are not evidence of anything other than that people in an international forum have very different perspectives.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by BubRoss on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @09:55AM (#20695563)
> The overwhelming majority are pure imagination, born out of humans' inability to listen to others with different perspectives from their own

Really? How deeply have you looked into this? Usernames follow patterns, entire names with only comments defending China from bad PR, voting happening in bursts, etc. The same thing happens on other sites and the same patterns happen with other areas with well known disinformation and social media teams.

The people bringing attention to things like this gave their reasons. Not only that, this is a thread about Chinese propaganda.

I would love to be shown that I'm off base, there is plenty of information that users don't have to that should make these things pretty obvious. Instead of looking into the extremely suspect patterns here though, you just called my comments 'poison' and 'pure imagination'. If you are going to say that, show me that it's true. Why are so many names in this thread named the same way and only used to counter negative stories about China?

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by changchuming on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @11:21AM (#20696469)
Perhaps there are a lot of Chinese citizens overseas who name their accounts the same way? Use your imagination for a little bit. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll. There are people who grew up in different environments and have very different worldviews.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by BubRoss on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @02:34PM (#20698536)
That's entirely possible, which is why I brought up all the other points of naming patterns, histories that are almost all deflections of Chinese criticism and no other participation, multiple downvotes on multiple comments within the same few minutes when the general trend is in the other direction, etc.

These are all hallmarks of disinformation campaigns from other groups and the same patterns happen on other sites. I think that is worth a discussion. A moderator jumping in to say it's 'poisonous' to point this out while giving no information to support that is pretty disgusting.

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by dang on Wednesday August 14, 2019 @06:47PM (#20700807)
I've given you this information to support it: nearly every time we investigated these claims, which are legion, we find nothing but the accuser's imagination. This pattern is overwhelming, which is why we've written that guideline the way we have.

If you're worried about abuse, you should be doing what the guidelines ask and email [email protected] instead of posting off-topic and destructive insinuations in the thread, where the odds are we won't even see them. We don't come close to reading everything here. I looked at some of the accounts with similar names and didn't find anything. That doesn't mean I looked at everything you saw; I probably didn't. If you want your concerns taken seriously, we're happy to look into specific links that you send. Occasionally we do find evidence of abuse, and in such cases we crack down hard. But we need you to follow the site guidelines, and not react to our requests to stop breaking them by breaking them further.

It is indeed poisonous to accuse other users of posting in bad faith, merely because their views seem preposterous to you. Users accusing other users of astroturfing, shilling, meddling, propaganda-ing, foreign-agenting, spying and so on is the most common internet trope there is right now. It's painfully clear that almost all of that is simply made up, and obviously we can't have HN discussions degenerating to that level.

The only approach to dealing with abuse that makes sense is to look for actual evidence. Someone else having an opposing view, even a completely wrong view, isn't evidence of abuse. It's just evidence that people have different views on divisive topics. As for "voting happening in bursts", "hallmarks of disinformation campaigns", and so on, all that kind of thing is notoriously in the eye of the beholder. People mostly see whatever they've primed themselves to see, and that is a function of how strongly they feel about their views: the ones who feel most passionately about a topic are inevitably the ones who see the most convincing 'patterns'. Still, if you're concerned about it, you're welcome to email [email protected] with specific links and we'll look into them. We always do. Just please follow the site guidelines from now on.

I've posted about this countless times, and anyone who wants more explanation can consume arbitrarily much of it here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by thankswell on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @06:44PM (#20691023)
HN is far from Chinese government’s concern in my mind, you should talk with the administrator.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by aaomidi on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @04:38PM (#20689985)
This is serious whataboutism, and actually is related to what the article is saying.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by jjcc on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @06:20PM (#20690834)
Whataboutism is another concept , say, take an hypothetical example, that French police did same thing and French media also make disinformation. Here the OP just claim that NYT report only one side story while hide another story. If his claim is true or not everybody can check.
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by BubRoss on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @04:48PM (#20690075)
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sniperjzp

Most of the comments from the last four months are actually whataboutism in response to criticism of China.

Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by aaomidi on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @05:33PM (#20690512)
Yep. And I love how I'm getting downvoted too!
Re:China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Pr... by BubRoss on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @08:01PM (#20691461)
I had nothing either way, then suddenly multiple downvotes right around 8 a.m. Beijing time. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

Edit: And very swiftly more downvotes and comment flags. Seems a little more stochato than a typical bad comment that gathers a few downvotes over time.