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Re:Exponential Growth and Covid-19 [video] by gruez on Sunday March 08, 2020 @07:56PM (#22521611)
>[...] and https://www.reddit.com/r/coronavirus for general news

A couple of weeks ago I saw a comment alleging that the subreddit had a pro-china bias[1]. Personally, I've noticed some patterns that seem to be consistent with those allegations:

* I frequent /r/all. when the subreddit shows up on /r/all (first or second page), it's almost always negative news about some country other than china

* I visited the subreddit on occasion and negative news about china are... few and never anywhere close to the top. At the writing of this comment[2] the only post about china is good news about a 100 year old man recovering from the infection.

* A few days ago there were stories of a hotel collapse in china (it was used to quarantine patients). Posts from various subreddits were showing up on /r/all (first page), however in the /r/coronavirus subreddit the story was in the middle of the first page. You'd think that if such a story was showing up on /r/all, that it'd be #1 or #2 place in the subreddit.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438754

[2] https://archive.is/DBWSj

Re:Exponential Growth and Covid-19 [video] by knzhou on Sunday March 08, 2020 @08:41PM (#22521863)
Just a month ago that subreddit was nothing but negative news about China, because China was doing a terrible job. Now China is evidently doing a good job and other countries are screwing up, so they're getting called out. Please don't turn every observation into the world into a conspiracy. It's possible for people to lack your nationalist fervor without being paid shills.
Re:Exponential Growth and Covid-19 [video] by gruez on Sunday March 08, 2020 @10:08PM (#22522297)
> Just a month ago that subreddit was nothing but negative news about China, because China was doing a terrible job. Now China is evidently doing a good job and other countries are screwing up, so they're getting called out.

That explains the first two points, but not the last. It is also consistent with a "moderator takeover" that the original commenter claimed. As it stands, the subreddit hasn't gone full blown /r/sino so it's hard to definitively tell.

> Please don't turn every observation into the world into a conspiracy.

Actually I never claimed there was any sort of conspiracy, just a bias. /r/politics has a liberal (and probably bernie) bias, but I, nor most people would call it a conspiracy.

> It's possible for people to lack your nationalist fervor without being paid shills.

Sure. OTOH you don't seem to think it's possible for me to bring up this topic without being nationalist.

Re:Exponential Growth and Covid-19 [video] by knzhou on Monday March 09, 2020 @12:00AM (#22522894)
It's the same set of moderators as when the sub was exclusively anti-China. The point is that the median reader of that sub is concerned with results, that's why the narrative their changed.

And yes, if you think celebrating the survival of Chinese grandmothers and grandfathers is so unbelievable that that anybody upvoting it must be a shill, you are blinded by politics. There are forums made for spewing out attitudes like yours, on the grimier parts of the internet. Please consider commenting over there instead, so we can keep HN clean. Thanks.