"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data."

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

FWIW, I didn't mean to suggest this was coordinated.

I take the point that my comment here is of low value. I do believe related issues will perhaps turn out to be the most important of my lifetime though, and it's unusually tricky to know how they should be tackled in the public arena. Apologies for me failing to do so appropriately here.

The top comment criticizes China, I'm not really sure that what you say is accurate. There's much to criticize about China, but we westerners are in a really bad place to do so, lest we want to sound either condescending or hypocritical.

Hey, your comments have been breaking the site guidelines so consistently and so badly lately that even though you have been a good HN user in the past, we're on the verge of banning you. Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments? We have already tried several times to get you to stop this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25709648

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585980

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389847

...but your account is standing out right now as one of the ones that's doing the most damage to this place by lowering discussion quality in many threads. I don't want to ban you, so please stop doing this! For example, posts like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25948268 are totally unacceptable on this site, regardless of what you're arguing for or against.

Let me unravel the mystery for you. I downvoted two comments “criticizing China” into the gray, and upvoted this one “criticizing the West”. What now, gonna accuse me of being an agent, a shill, or something?

Of course I flagged this one for breaking site guidelines, too.

(Sorry dang for knowingly breaking site guidelines with this comment. Just feel like given the constant accusations whenever there’s a thread like this, sometimes one has to show themself. I don’t think your “I looked into the users who downvoted and they’re not shills” is actually working.)