>Please, please let this concept enter the general public's mind.
Especially salient because the idea of censorship in the form of bookburning or restricting speech is still way too dominant (especially in American culture).
Information overflow and deflection through a sheer barrage of garbage and misinformation seems to be the new (and much more effective) MO.
> Looks like after trying to follow "guidelines" from Orwell's "1984", we are just trying Huxley's "Brave New World".
This guy gets it. I absolutely agree that China needs the searing scrutiny of the world for the sake of its people and the world but China is also still in absolute infantile stages of propaganda sophistication. Straight up censorships and news suppressions are things the West did in WWI. Astroturfing is a step up but operating under the premise of a palatable freedom of information and political choice while being inundated with what to think without ever receiving 'literal fake news' is light-years ahead of China.
Information overflow and deflection through a sheer barrage of garbage and misinformation seems to be the new (and much more effective) MO.
It's not just information overflow, but relevance and objective importance.
Given this lens, is CNN & Co any less deceptive than the Chinese gov.? Same means, just different ends. The Chinese gov seeks control, the MSM profits. (I'll pass on the MSM being a proxy for the US gov, to keep it simple.)
The end result is that minds are mmanipulated, and urgent issues and truths are hidden in a blur of overload and further burried under a pile of pointless horse shit.
I definitely hope so. I also hope this awareness doesn't stop at our borders since this type of astroturfing is exactly the official playbook in various ShareBlue/Media Matters type PACs https://i.redd.it/oij2wau47fdy.jpg (though with better use of euphemisms, a game at which China is still in an infantile stage).
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.
The method is different perhaps, which is interesting. I think that is an interesting point of discussion.
In terms of intent or morality or whatever, it's just a different method for propaganda. I don't see this as a different category for what other governments have done in the past.
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.
Whether you are correct or not about the re-education camps post, 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.
>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 saw that thread and I agree with your take, but unfortunately that's just a normal product of online discourse, not special to China-related topics. My guess is that people who live in the US saw an opportunity to call attention to prison reform rather than Chinese who wanted to deflect attention from the original article.
Robert Anton Wilson, in the introduction he wrote for some other book, pointed out that, of the regime changes to occur in the last century, well over half of them were the result of some sort of coup d'état. In other words, conspiracy is the norm.
"Lesson number one: trust no one. The minute God crapped out the third caveman, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them."
> 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.
Yes we often agree with the Russians too. We think it's because we'll agree with the truth wherever we see it, but it's quite possible that you know our minds better than we ourselves do.
Do you think we're in an "information war"? If we are, who are our most dangerous opponents?
When I read that thread, I wondered at those comments. They always come up in these discussions. I always wonder how many are genuine and how many are actual government FUD.
Especially salient because the idea of censorship in the form of bookburning or restricting speech is still way too dominant (especially in American culture).
Information overflow and deflection through a sheer barrage of garbage and misinformation seems to be the new (and much more effective) MO.