> Your comment history is extremely problematic for Hacker News, because you've been using it to engage in nationalistic flamewar. I don't care what your views are or which nations you have feelings about: doing this is as toxic as it gets.
I feel you've misread my comment(s). The feelings I expressed weren't about any nations, but rather about a particular HN thread. If that's "as toxic as it gets," sorry. I don't think I was personally being very nationalistic, ether. Maybe others were, though. All I wanted was a thread to stay on topic.
> Edit: actually you went so far over the line that we banned the account. No one is allowed to turn HN into nationalistic hell, regardless of which nation they're fighting for.
Sorry. I did not think I was engaging in any personal attacks or "nationalistic flame-war," rather just responding to Jonathanyc, who:
1. Followed me, personally, from another thread because they seemed to believe they were entitled a response to some off-topic "points."
2. Made baseless accusations against me, such as accusing me of being an "agent provocateur," a Russian or Chinese troll, and someone who was engaging in the "political abuse of psychology."
I think Jonathanyc's behavior was far more characteristic of a "personal attack." You're the mod and can ban and unban who you like, but I do hope there's at least some consistency in treatment.
Anyway, I think I got very little warning here, and I feel I might be getting judged for the actions of others. I really don't see any of my comments rising to the level of a "flame," except maybe the exasperated ones that were in response to direct personal attacks against me might barely qualify.
Sorry. I did not think I was engaging in any personal attacks or "nationalistic flame-war," rather just responding to someone who:
1. Followed me, personally, from another thread because they seemed to believe they were entitled a response to some off-topic "points."
2. Made baseless accusations against me, such as accusing me of being an "agent provocateur," a Russian or Chinese troll, and someone who was engaging in the "political abuse of psychology."
I think Jonathanyc's behavior was far more characteristic of a "personal attack." You're the mod and can ban and unban who you like, but I do hope there's at least some consistency.
> Today yes, but with FB's technical capabilities, I can't see why they couldn't knock off a respectable (if not superior in most respects ... clone of YouTube in way under a year.
Facebook's challenge, IMHO, isn't technical, it's cultural. Namely: it's transparently selfish and seems to mostly act for it's short term advantage. It doesn't know how to share a pie. It doesn't seem to have a consistent strategy for people to build around.
> most producers would clone their content to FB very quickly, especially smaller ones who are pissed off at demonetization.
> and the trust they've lost in the last year.
Facebook let social games get out of hand, then it kneecapped all the social game makers.
Facebook kneecapped people who learned to depend on FB Pages to reach their audiences, to force them to buy ads.
Facebook just kneecapped video producers, probably worse than Youtube did. They kneecapped the news media as well.
If I was a video content producer, I wouldn't use a Facebook Youtube clone, even if it seemed better. I'd expect to get kneecapped, probably in the 2-3 year timeframe.
> Youtube seems to offer a better user experience than facebook for users who don't have an account or aren't signed into an account.
I think it's something a bit more general: Facebook is all about getting people to do, right now, what's good for Facebook, and it's willing to break things and get in your face to accomplish that.
Youtube, and Google generally, seem to be much more OK with just providing a consistent, approachable service; and letting the users use it naturally. In the long term, that seems like the better strategy because it doesn't burn trust like it grows on trees.
> What sort of bizarre hedging is saying that people are just acting "perhaps like" paid Chinese trolls?
You need to re-read my comment, especially the sentence after the one you partially quoted. What I was getting at was that someone who inadvertently behaves like a propagandist should re-evaluate their behavior and modify it, because it's destructive (if it wasn't destructive, why would the propagandist do it?). For instance, someone pushing hyper-partisan memes on Facebook should stop because Russians agents literally do that same thing as a disruption tactic.
> but I am not exaggerating when I say that I think putting these things on the record is important for everyone.
Anyway, you are not acting like a stable, sensible person. You're getting too worked up. Please, take a break. Do something relaxing or fun. This is not a productive derail that anyone else would benefit from.
> Also I find it quite telling that Lionsion still refuses to respond to any of my points.
Ok, I'll bite. Here's my response:
You need to go outside and take a walk, because your "points" have been off topic, literally paranoid, and bizarrely personal. You're accusing me of being an "agent provocateur" and either a Chinese or Russian troll. That's crazy talk and utter nonsense.
Ignoring you isn't "telling," it's frustration and a lack of better options.
The truth is I'm a guy who was frustrated by a thread yesterday that was totally ruined by people who derailed it, perhaps like the 50 Cent Party would. Just to make it super clear: I don't think it was disrupted by the actual 50 Cent Party, but by people who maybe should consider learning to not act like it.
Edit: I apologize to everyone who reads this thread (or the dead comments below). In situations like this, the correct action is to ignore someone like my interlocutor, but that's difficult when he makes personal attacks. I should have held firm despite them.
> Why is it that your account only 67 days old yet >75% of your comments are about China? Do you even comment on normal Hacker News topics that aren't related to politics?
Because you didn't look past two days of comments? Most of my comments over the past two days have been in this article and the other about Xinjiang, which are both about China. But you're right, I have an interest in it.
Anyway, this thread with you is clearly off-topic, so I'm going to stop it. If have further questions for me, you can study my other comments or figure out a way to privately message me.
> accusing the government of sending groups of real (let's define real as regular HN contributors with at least 10 karma pts) people to deflect/defend on a HN post is a technically a conspiracy theory.
I never claimed that in my comment, you should read it more closely.
What I did claim is that regular HN posters will often comment (for their own reasons) in a way that would make the Chinese propagandists and censors happy.
> pointing out the random articles dealing with China ever is also unrelated. (A freaking article about the Moon lander for pete's sake)
Which was observed to have had anomalous commenting behavior.
I think it's an important question to consider if the 50 Cent Party operates on non-Chinese forums, and the observation in that comment is relevant to that question.
> The topic is propaganda, that other countries and organizations like companies do that is related to the topic.
And the topic of the Xinjiang re-education camp thread, judging by the comments, must have been "everything bad that any country has ever done ever." /s
I think this one will stay, but mainly because the content is an inoculation against the kind of trolling that usually leads to China threads getting buried.
I do have an irrational hope that the inoculation will last for more than a single thread though.
> The thing is there's this strange, "uncanny" feeling I get whenever these things are shared too
I posted this because I got super frustrated with all the derails and distractions that utterly destroyed the Xinjiang indoctrination camp post from yesterday. If you don't believe me you can look at my comment history.
> The rating was sustained by constant comments by Chinese studying in the US and burnishing their reps with the Party.
I can believe it. The Chinese government apparently paying students to wave flags when their officials come visit [1]. Since they manage to do that successfully, it wouldn't surprise me if they do similar things with internet comments.
> All governments do propaganda, this is a well known fact....Even companies astroturf.
This paper isn't about that kind of propaganda, where a particular narrative gets pushed. It's about an insidious kind of propaganda where an unrelated or semi-related narrative is pushed to distract from some topic.
> Why is this downvoted?
Probably because it can be interpreted as a similar kind of propaganda to the kind the article describes (e.g. lets get everyone riled up about Israel such that they forget about China). I can see the loose topic-similarity aiding such a goal.
> Whenver there is any negative story about china, the downvotes happen immediately and "defends of the honor of china" pop up magically throwing dirt everywhere.
Maybe a little, but the main thing I see in stories like that is dozens of comments that that derail the comments into a "the US is just as bad!" flame-war, and kill discussion of the negative story.
It's really effective, because Western users are often ignorant of China and/or indifferent to it, but will happily jump into a flame-war about Western countries when presented with the bait.
I doubt it, since that's not at all what the paper describes. Here's a quote from the abstract:
> In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime's strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We show that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime.
You should actually read the paper. An IP user making edits to a controversial Wikipedia page is nothing like what this paper is talking about. To summarize:
1. The Chinese government has a massive, coordinated effort to post on social media to serve their propaganda goals.
2. That effort attempts to distract from things they don't want people to consider, rather than just loudly pushing the party line.
I agree. Distraction can be really disruptive to having meaningful, productive discussions. I think many people even do it reflexively even if they're not getting paid or instructed to. There was a recent HN post about terrible reeducation camps in Xinjiang [1]. Almost no one talked about the heartbreaking story or what it might mean, as most of the comments were tired derails into "the US is bad, too" territory and responses to them. I'm pretty sure the story got quickly buried because the flame-war detector got tripped. I'm sure the Chinese censors' hearts would flutter a little if they learned about that.
I feel you've misread my comment(s). The feelings I expressed weren't about any nations, but rather about a particular HN thread. If that's "as toxic as it gets," sorry. I don't think I was personally being very nationalistic, ether. Maybe others were, though. All I wanted was a thread to stay on topic.
> Edit: actually you went so far over the line that we banned the account. No one is allowed to turn HN into nationalistic hell, regardless of which nation they're fighting for.
Sorry. I did not think I was engaging in any personal attacks or "nationalistic flame-war," rather just responding to Jonathanyc, who:
1. Followed me, personally, from another thread because they seemed to believe they were entitled a response to some off-topic "points."
2. Made baseless accusations against me, such as accusing me of being an "agent provocateur," a Russian or Chinese troll, and someone who was engaging in the "political abuse of psychology."
I think Jonathanyc's behavior was far more characteristic of a "personal attack." You're the mod and can ban and unban who you like, but I do hope there's at least some consistency in treatment.
Anyway, I think I got very little warning here, and I feel I might be getting judged for the actions of others. I really don't see any of my comments rising to the level of a "flame," except maybe the exasperated ones that were in response to direct personal attacks against me might barely qualify.