Mentioning "whataboutism" should IMO be labelled as logical fallacy. Not once have I seen it used as a valid counterargument. Instead, it's always the same pattern: person A states a problem, person B points out that it's non-problem distracting attention from the core of the issue, and then person B gets accused of "whataboutism"...
You did whataboutism; JohnJamesRambo brought in the term (as did camgunz).
> I don't really care about what happens in china. I'm just sick of "our" media distracting from what really affects me with nonsense about china.
HN runs plenty of articles about tech companies knowing way too much about us. It runs plenty of articles about government surveillance in the US (and the rest of the West). We talk about those things a lot, and we care about them a lot. But we can talk about other things, too, and this article is about China. How about letting those of us who care talk about China, rather than trying to derail the conversation? There will be another article about the stuff you care about tomorrow, if not sooner. Feel free to join in the discussion on that one when it comes.
> I would really be interested on what your agenda is.
Maybe the agenda is to be able to have a conversation about a topic, without the conversation getting hijacked?
> It's funny how the two replies to my comment is about whataboutism.
That's because this article is about China, not about the US or Europe. What you did is exactly whataboutism.
GP was not complaining about HN, but the media companies that report on Chinese censorship while at the same time stoking moral panics, proliferating biased hitpieces on people and entities spreading ideas they dislike, and practically begging tech companies and western governments to censor and regulate the internet.
That is the whataboutism at hand here: "Yes we want to censor, ban, and shame you for our own reasons, but hey...look over there at China! Scary!"
> You did whataboutism; JohnJamesRambo brought in the term (as did camgunz).
No I didn't. If I did, I would be excusing china's behavior. But I'm not. What I am saying is that china isn't rewriting the rules, I'm saying the US and EU are rewriting the rules of the internet. Maybe china can rewrite the rules within their "intra"net, but that isn't affecting me or anyone else around the world. EU's vote tomorrow,
has far greater impact on the internet than anything china could do.
> Maybe the agenda is to be able to have a conversation about a topic, without the conversation getting hijacked?
But my point was on topic. I was rejecting the notion that china is rewriting the rules of the internet.
But for some odd reason, anytime someone disagrees with the clickbaiting media, a few accounts start accusing you of whataboutism or even russian botting. The "whataboutism" response has already been exposed as a standard brigading technique by political groups/media on reddit, facebook and most of social media. It's 2015/2016 that nobody uses anymore because it's been exposed as propaganda. It's shocking to see it on hacker news, but we are always late to the party I guess.
> That's because this article is about China, not about the US or Europe. What you did is exactly whataboutism.
No. The article is about the rules of the internet. The bit about china is just propaganda to distract from the EU vote tomorrow. The fact that I disagreed with the major point of the article isn't whataboutism. It's the truth. The threat to the internet isn't from china, who are pretty much confined to their own national intranet. The threat is from corporations, the media and the wealthy who want to control the internet.
You know the people supporting and voting for more censorship and control tomorrow.
> No. The article is about the rules of the internet. The bit about china is just propaganda to distract from the EU vote tomorrow.
The article is almost totally about China and the rules of the internet. The only way you can say "the bit about China is just propaganda" is to say that the whole article is just propaganda. I suspect that you actually believe that, but I think you're wrong.
China wants to totally change the rules of the internet. The EU is also wanting to change the rules, in a less total but more immediate way. We can and should talk about both those things, rather than saying that China is "just propaganda to distract us".
By all means, talk about the EU. Really. But China is also a danger, and we need to also talk about that danger.