The topic is propaganda, that other countries and organizations like companies do that is related to the topic. If that's unrelated, pointing out the random articles dealing with China ever is also unrelated. (A freaking article about the Moon lander for pete's sake)
I don't think "China" is a reason enough for things to be under the same topic.
No, the topic is "How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument" which is the topic of the paper published.
The paper is about the CCP's propaganda techniques on its own people, not driving numbers for nyt articles (US media). The people in this thread are tying it to other events that are related only because they have to do with China. That's what I mean in that it's tangentially related.
I don't think tangentially related things are bad. I do think it's upsetting when some tangentially related things are bad but others aren't for strange reasons.
> 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
That's probably a good reason. The thing is I get sick of the moralizing that underlies all these threads, as if our media doesn't do the exact same thing. re: manufacturing consent.
The thing is there's this strange, "uncanny" feeling I get whenever these things are shared too, all of a sudden, HN readers who are usually critical start to coalesce around a common fear of the other.
>The thing is I get sick of the moralizing that underlies all these threads, as if our media doesn't do the exact same thing. re: manufacturing consent.
But this is exactly the whataboutism I'm talking about.
The point of the article is that our media doesn't do the exact same thing. When Chomsky and Herman talked about "manufacturing consent", they didn't mean that there is literally a cabal of media companies and the government guiding the American media. However in China there is, in fact, a documented, government-sponsored program to manipulate Chinese media.
If you want to discuss the problem of manufactured consent in the US or the West, start a thread about that, but don't clutter this discussion with irrelevant derails seemingly designed to muddy the waters and deflect from the point of the discussion.
> 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.
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.
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.
Okay, so I understand how you feel. The thing is I clicked on that post and the top comments are critical of indoctrination camps. There's one top-level comment you replied to that pointed out an irony given the imprisoned population here in the US.
The article details, AFAICT, the CCP's attempts to spread propaganda to its own people, not to the west, although I have no doubts it does try to spread it elsewhere. So given that, what is the likelihood that most of the critical, anti-US comments are in fact CCP propaganda hires? I don't know, but it seems a little bit much to assume everything is a plot to subvert people's opinions.
I'm not a propagandist. I agree with the sentiment in the comment on that article (I missed) about the US imprisoned population. People can disagree with you and point out opinions you disagree with.
I said earlier, somewhat sarcastically, it sucks that people are pushing things in this comment thread and voting down and flagging comments that point out other countries do the same. I am always somewhat paranoid, and anyone would given Snowden leaks and having read history about things like COINTELPRO, etc., but it was somewhat tongue in cheek (yes, I'm not perfect, I say mean things online like most people). Do I really believe all of you are US gov't plants trying to sway people to be belligerent to China? I don't think so.
I get we should keep our eyes open, but we should be willing to accept that there are people who disagree with us, and not everyone who disagrees with us is a Russian/Chinese/etc bot. I'm actually really bothered by the attitude online these days that calls everyone who disagrees with us as being an astroturf. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it really helps to further strengthen the echo chambers we've created for ourselves.
Isn't talking about another country a distraction from that?