> allergic to negative mentions of china

Not exactly. Some of us would rather first and primarily focus on the disinfo artists who are destroying Western democracies than point the finger at a country that doesn't claim to be free and fair and open.

Pot, meet kettle: from the Wikipedia entry on Britain's GCHQ JTRIG unit: 'The scope of the JTRIG's mission includes using "dirty tricks" to "destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt" enemies by "discrediting" them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications.'

And: 'In 2011, the JTRIG conducted a denial-of-service attack (DoS) on the activist network Anonymous.[1] Other JTRIG targets have included the government of Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan.[2]

Campaigns operated by JTRIG have broadly fallen into two categories; cyber attacks and propaganda efforts.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...

Edit: See also https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/how-to-spot-and-defe...

Is there any evidence for the scale of such operations being conducted domestically?

> Is there any evidence

A core part of any domestic intelligence service is having the means to discredit and publically ridicule anyone who has or claims to have such evidence. Asking for it in this context is noble, but should be viewed as fundamentally futile. Either you will not have it, or the people providing it will most likely be crackpots to your perception.

In this case the GCHQ isn't a domestic intelligence agency. In addition there usually is some slight evidence available for claims like these which would help support its existence. For example before the Snowden disclosures there were several other disclosures that demonstrated that mass surveillance was ongoing, for example with ECHELON and Room 641A.

> In 2011, the JTRIG conducted a denial-of-service attack (DoS) on the activist network Anonymous.[1] Other JTRIG targets have included the government of Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan.[2]

what exactly is the problem with this?

Might be more of an allergy to unbridled hypocrisy than simply negative mentions of China.

Like hearing oil companies complain about the damage to the environment being wreaked by coal companies.

Or hearing Chinese state media complain about American human rights abuses (which is an example in this article cited by the BBC).

no one assumed that? The point is everyone can say whatever that person wants, including ANY journalists. Being afraid of some "government policy" is a paranoia coming from countries where the first point does not apply, projecting their own fears to others

>Being afraid of some "government policy" is a paranoia coming from countries where the first point does not apply

So like a long tradition from Gary Webb to Assange, cancel culture, attacks on the integrity and reputation (and de-platforming) of people like Taibbi or Greenwald, and so on?

>cancel culture

Damn the uk gov sits on Twitter all day?

Maybe these people you bring up isn't as benevolent as you think they are?

>The point is everyone can say whatever that person wants

This works fine if everybody's voice has equal weights but some have louder megaphones than others. Their voices matter disproportionately more.

Has there ever been a place or time when this wasn't true?