"Lure" is a nice short word for "attract with incentives" and most past headlines using the word don't attach any particular connotation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (including when it refers to SV companies)

Probably just headlinese, like these words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese#Commonly_used_short...

I think that it is interesting how from a fishing perspective a lure is also a trap in one sense.

Is it? A lure is what gets you to the trap, as I understand it (not a native speaker so I might be bringing that over from my native language)

A lure is a fake fish/bug/food with hooks on it.

It's designed to make fish want to bite it and then the hooks dig in to them. Trapping them.

> "Lure" is a nice short word for "attract with incentives"

In american english, lure has negative connotations - like pedophiles luring children with candy or human traffickers luring vulnerable people with the false hope of a better life elsewhere.

I don't think people who read the headline came away with a positive view of Ant's $7 Credit Limit.

Do you think the headlines below leave the reader with a negative impression?

"FedEx lures sellers with two-day air shipping after Amazon contract ends"

"Cloudflare goes big on serverless with new CLI, lures devs with free tier"

"Shopping for nostalgia: Toys R Us lures Michigan fans to Canada"

"A ‘Honking Big’ Cave in Canada Lures Geologists to Its Mouth"

"North of Netherlands Lures Elon Musk with Billboards"

Is two-day air shipping bad for sellers? Is signing up for Cloudflare's free tier a mistake? Is Canada a dangerous country full of toys and geologist-swallowing caves? Will visiting the north of the Netherlands be the end of Elon Musk?

They are basically pushing a credit line in-app to half a billion users.

That's the wet dream of western credit card companies.

Sure in some perspective getting people not used to debt at all to easily overspend might be called empowering from a twisted neoliberal point of view.

neoliberal - had to look that up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

"Neoliberal" is effectively a snarl term now.

It's such an imprecise word that it has become a way of showing distaste for something without offering specific criticism. Like in this instance-- what does a CCP backed company offering small, zero interest loans to its citizens have to do with Western left-of-center politics? I can't think of anything less "neoliberal", if anything it's communist.

Seeing everything from a US-centric view really not make sense here, since nothing comparable to this exists in America, and because microloans like this are a lot more meaningful to people in other parts of the world.

One of the cornerstones of neoliberalism as practiced in the US in the Clinton-era and beyond has been predatory lending disguised in a facade of laissez-faire feel-good marketing. Drawing a line between Jack Ma’s new lending scheme and that is a pretty specific criticism, even if you don’t agree with it.

But we're not talking about predatory payday loans, which are not even legal in China.

If you want to say that QE is "neoliberal" and that this is sort of like QE except bottom up instead of top down, I guess I could see your point although I would argue that it's convoluted because the bottom up vs. top down is a major distinction that no longer makes the two similar.

Also, I disagree that predatory lending is a cornerstone of the modern Democratic party, but that's neither here nor there.

That's par for the course when it comes to propaganda.

It's even worse when it comes to international news. How many times has china "conquered the middle east" or "colonized africa"? A lot more than you think if you follow the news.

"China's latest conquest: Middle East power broker - commentary"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/chinas-latest-conquest-middl...

China is "colonizing" africa.

"China raises fears of 'new colonialism' with $60 billion..."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/03/china-invest-60-...

When we actually invade and conquer the middle east, the media portrays it as "bringing freedom". When we actually colonize africa, the media portrays it as "aid".

Of course it isn't just the west spreading propaganda, china does it also. It's why it comes to geopolitical or controversial events, you need a wide variety propaganda to get as honest an assessment as possible because every side lies about something and is honest about other things.

The author of the article is called Yifan Xie. I don't think it's anti-china propaganda.

I don't have anything to say about whether or not the article is anti-China propaganda, but I just wanted to address this comment because there's some underlying assumptions being made here about names and ethnicity.

In this day and age, I don't think a name is guaranteed to tell you much about a person. It's a bit fallacious to say "she has a Chinese name, so she's probably not against China."

She could be from Taiwan or Hong Kong, both of which have plenty of reasons not to like China. She could also have been born and raised by Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong parents in any other country.

I have an incredibly "white" name, but I'm ethnically Korean. I know I'm an outlier, but it gives me first-hand knowledge that using names to assume things about people's ethnicity (and from that, their beliefs) is not a good tactic.

She lives in Hong Kong.

Yes, there are many mainland Chinese living in Hong Kong.

> The microlender is called Huabei, which means “just spend.”

Right, because we're living in such a pro-SV, pro-tech climate right now.

Ant Financial is owned by Alibaba and Jack Ma. Alibaba is founded and owned by various communist party members. Jack Ma is a communist party member. Ant Financial is essentially co-owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

In order to encourage a failing economy, trap more consumers in debt (China has an outrageous 400%+ total debt to gdp) and prevent unrest, CCP is giving a $7 credit limit to its 700M people in poverty. Whether it works or not is debatable, as Chinese consumers are already neck deep in debt and hurting from rising inflation

There are close to 100 million CCP members, and virtually every successful businessman in China is a member. Alleging that this app is some deep conspiracy by CCP top brass is both unlikely and unhelpful, especially given that the Party has been clamping down on loans elsewhere.

You think that it's a coincidence that every successful businessman in China is a CCP member?

Or maybe successful businessmen just want to buy influence in what ever system they are operating. In a democracy you donate or lobby parliament, in a one party system you become part of the party to get closer to the people in power. Seems pretty smart of businessmen if you ask me, not saying i'm condoning that behavior. But then again im not a successful businessman.

No, I'm just saying membership is a logical step to take for every Chinese businessman, and doesn't imply very much about their actual ideology or the degree to which their actions are dictated by the party.