[Lionsion]

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.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091072

[creaghpatr]

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.

[carapace]

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."

[Lionsion]

> 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.

[jessaustin]

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?

[Sangermaine]

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.