HN also needs to very carefully assess potential shill accounts.
Someone else posting an opposing view does not count as evidence. Commenters are overwhelmingly too quick to jump to conclusions about that, and end up poisoning the threads worse because of it.
I mean, Europe needed to settle 2 million refugees from Syria and how exactly did that turn out for everyone?
As for the stuff that gets flagged off the front page, here's just random things I noticed, some were slightly penalized, some were sunk like a brick very quickly:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17756823 From laboratory in far west, China’s surveillance state spreads quietly
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18564433 Tracking China's Muslim Gulag
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18674885 China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19286107 Database Leak Gives Us a Window into China’s Digital Surveillance State
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665495 China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714401 China is working to silence critics of its prisonlike re-education camps
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712564 China Bans the Word 'Leica' on Social Media
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20278943 China Warns World Leaders: Don't Talk About the Hong Kong Protests
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304526 I Felt the Fear of Abduction by China in Hong Kong. Appeasing Bejing Has to Stop
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318279 China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20315905 They Come for Us at Night: China's Vanishing Muslims
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543 China's Vanishing Muslims: Undercover in World's Most Dystopian Place
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20466312 China Is Drafting Urgent Plan to Resolve Hong Kong Chaos, SCMP Says
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20578900 China's capital orders Arabic, Muslim symbols taken down
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20702738 Medium suspends account that investigates Chinese concentration camps
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20719470 Hong Kong protest: What is mainland China hearing?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20712762 A Walk in Hong Kong
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20740626 Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from China
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20748615 China’s Soft-Power Fail: Condemning Hong Kong’s Protests
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20777236 Why China’s assault on Cathay Pacific should scare all foreign firms
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20780772 Google refused to call out China over disinformation about Hong Kong
While all that is swept under the rug by user flags, that's not enough, some even complain that even the most fluffy criticism of China that manages to get discussed for a bit is some sign of some terrible bias. Goes with the territory, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IingQPPEh0
I'm a simple man: Never again means never again, no ifs and buts, no negotiations.
What is wrong with my comment above?
Do you have a problem with my opinion that the CEO resigned due to brand damage and potential loss of business in the market?
Or do you have a problem with actual facts, such as the letter the board of directors wrote, the arrest of a pilot for rioting, etc?
I see this happening everywhere in relation to the unrest in HK. Ideally, ideas should be discussed on their merit and in the light of day. When faced with what is perceived as dissent, strong counter arguments should be made instead of shutting down discourse.
In my opinion, this censorious attitude will be damaging to the pro-democracy movement’s cause in the long term.
EDIT: response to jeremysalwen’s comment below since it seems my comments are either being rate limited or filtered.
> If the 50 cent army ever came to HN, it would look like the above two comments.
Thank you.
I could not have asked for a better example of what I meant than your comment. I've seen variants of this type of comment repeated everywhere on HN and Reddit to shut down legitimate discourse. I have only made extremely neutral comments, and yet here I am feeling like I’m being surrounded by a suspicious lynch mob. If you think turning every exchange of ideas into the Spanish Inquisition is the best way to support the plight of the protestors then I’d disagree, but that’s your prerogative.
Also, if an echo chamber is what people want HN to be, I can live with that. I just think it’d be a pity because I enjoy reading discussions with a diversity of opinion - more specifically, I enjoy reading high quality responses to actual dissenters, not unsubstantiated witch-hunting or low effort dismissals to every ‘threat’ real or imagined.