[gavinray]

Hey what sort of bullshit is this HN?

I was reading a reply by a guy who counter-commented on this, a bunch of links of people on YouTube walking around this same area and not seeing anything like this.

Then went to comment, and it says "flagged" and was deleted, in under 10 minutes.

I don't really care about politics or China at all, but that is some spooky-tier censorship here on HN. Wtf is going on here?

Here's one of the links I followed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wENwvxsfVM8

[wegrwerg]

If that link is the best representation of the lot, then yeah, they deserved to be deleted. Walking around a neighborhood with a high density of a given ethnicity, showing them managing to enjoy the life they have does nothing to discredit the idea that the same ethnicity is oppressed and heavily targeted.

Or to put it another way with a much more mild example, you can make a video full of happy black folks in some of the most backwards racist oppressive parts of the US. The existence of happy people does not negate the oppression they continue to endure.

[gavinray]

I'm not intending/trying to start any sort of argument about how things actually are.

I have no idea. I've never been to China. It could be really bad, exactly the way the video makes it out to be. The video could be dramatized, and not representative of the situation as a whole.

I'm not sure I would believe things that China told me about the US

By the same logic, I'm not sure I believe all the things that US/US-allied media tell me about China

Without access to verifiably unbiased information (which is difficult in an age where nations have entire agencies dedicated to misinformation for political purposes) it's something that's hard for me to form an objective opinion on. And I'm not that invested in it to want to form an opinion.

I just wanted to point out this odd behavior that I've not seen much of on here.

[andrewxdiamond]

I encourage you to apply occam's razor here. I don’t think any political entity has any interest in controlling what individuals post on a tiny website like HN.

[gavinray]

Here is the post that has vanished:

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=29684814

  > I don’t think any political entity has any interest in controlling what individuals post on a tiny website like HN.

I wish I could pull a cached view of the comment up (I tried), there wasn't anything I would interpret as being inflammatory in there.

The comment boiled down to:

  "VICE isn't what I'd call the most reputable/unbiased source. I'd encourage everyone to do their own research/make their own decision. Here are a bunch of links of people walking around the same area, and it looks nothing like what is cut together from that VICE episode."

The speed at which it was flagged and removed was shocking. Like I said, (maybe I am a bad person for this), I don't really care that much about China or politics in general. There are a lot of other things I'd rather spend my energy caring about, that directly impact me.

I just wanted to call out this very odd behavior. I don't see HN as a place where people who speak objectively + respectfully get silenced, generally.

[andrewxdiamond]

As for the flagging, I believe HN auto-flags comments from new accounts that receive a large number of downvotes as an anti-spam feature.

[andrewxdiamond]

If you enable showdead on your profile, you’ll see that this comment is denying the well documented genocide that is occurring in these regions. That will rightfully annoy many people here, hence the downvotes.

So using the razor, I think we can conclude what happened.

User makes a new throwaway account to spread easily disproved information

Other users downvote the misinformation

HN autoflags the comment to protect against preceived-spam.

Although you are right to question what you see. It is never wrong to take a second to ask “what’s going on here?”

[monort]

Enable showdead in settings to view flagged comments.

[themitigating]

There are other rules that are unrelated to being objective or respectful

[hulitu]

There are a lot of people "with an agenda" here, to say the least. And unlike Slashdot you cannot reply to flagged or dead comments which benefits those people.

[hker]

> a bunch of links of people on YouTube walking around this same area and not seeing anything like this.

There is heavy tracking and surveillance in China [1], especially in Xinjiang [2][3].

Hence any reporting of Xinjiang, including the YouTube links you mentioned and posted, have selection bias.

That is, unfavorable reports or videos are censored, while favorable videos are selected, if not outright sponsored as part of large-scale online disinformation campaigns [5][6].

=====

The tracking and surveillance of reporters in Xinjiang, where journalists are tracked and have photos deleted for no reasons [2]:

    I was in Kashgar to report on how the Chinese authorities had turned to technology to cement their control of the Xinjiang territory, a region in the west of the country. Foreign journalists who travel there are tracked. I became one of the watched.

    [...snipped...]

    Another time, a police officer stopped us close to our hotel. Inspecting Chris’s photos, he deleted a shot of a camel. When Chris asked why that photo was deleted, the man turned to Chris and said, “In China, there are no whys.”.

=====

The tracking and surveillance of reporters in general, using the pandemic as an excuse and using visas for control [3]:

    Several foreign and domestic journalists were forced to abandon stories after being told "to leave or be quarantined on the spot," the report highlighted. Press credentials were commonly canceled by Beijing officials and embassies were routinely tasked with trying to renew revoked visas from journalists. The report said foreign journalists were used as "pawns" in China's international diplomatic disputes.

=====

The sponsorship of favorable YouTube and other social media videos, also covering ethnic mintorities [5]:

     The Barretts are part of a crop of new social media personalities who paint cheery portraits of life as foreigners in China — and also hit back at criticisms of Beijing’s authoritarian governance, its policies toward ethnic minorities and its handling of the coronavirus. 

    [...snipped...]

     State-run news outlets and local governments have organized and funded pro-Beijing influencers’ travel, according to government documents and the creators themselves. They have paid or offered to pay the creators. They have generated lucrative traffic for the influencers by sharing videos with millions of followers on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. 

    [...snipped...]

     His videos do not mention the internal government documents, firsthand testimonials and visits by journalists that indicate that the Chinese authorities have held hundreds of thousands of Xinjiang’s Muslims in re-education camps.

    They also do not mention his and his family’s business ties to the Chinese state.

=====

> Hey what sort of bullshit is this HN?

This sort of bullshit (sponsored videos) should not be promoted on HN, which may fuel the disinformation campaigns [5][6].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/29/china-province... "Chinese province targets journalists and students in planned surveillance system"

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/insider/china-xinjiang-re... "Being Tracked While Reporting in China, Where ‘There Are No Whys’"

[3]: https://www.newsweek.com/china-harassing-intimidating-journa... "China Harassing, Intimidating Journalists With Surveillance Built to Curb COVID-19"

[4]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/technology/ch... "How Beijing Influences the Influencers"

[5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20211224143113/https://www.nytim... "How Beijing Influences the Influencers"

[6]: https://miburo.substack.com/p/cotton-the-act "Cotton the Act: Large-Scale Network of CCP-aligned Facebook Accounts Deny Mass Atrocity in China's Xinjiang Province"

Edits: added more links.

[gavinray]

  > This sort of bullshit (sponsored videos) should not be promoted on HN.

Promoted or not, this is generally a community for having level-headed discussions about things.

The original commenter says "China is X way".

Someone responds and says "China is Y way."

Everyone ought to be able to upvote/downvote, and argue + discuss to their hearts content.

I have no horse in this race, but I would have expected the person to just get downvoted into oblivion or responded to with posts like yours, containing responding counter-arguments/links, if the majority of people disagree with or hold contrary evidence to.

My reaction was less to do it about it being anything specifically related to China, and more about the principle/premise of the matter.

It could equally have been "Person 1 says eggs are bad for you, Person 2 says eggs are good for you." and I would have had the same reaction.

[dillondoyle]

There is a big difference between real debate on real issues - the example egg nutrition lol. Versus trying to refute or distract with a 'debate' on reality & facts.

Some things shouldn't be up for debate and calling doubt on reality is a weapon used by those who have political stakes.

China is a tough one too because as we saw on a top HN post from a few days ago we know the CCP has a large, active operation to comment and engage in online forums to sway opinion.

Article gave examples of typical straw man, whataboutism, handy wavy redirection.

The kind of comments exactly like what got flagged.

[hker]

This HN post?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661475 "Spamouflage: CCP-Aligned Disinformation Campaign on Facebook Twitter YouTube"

[dillondoyle]

I think same news source! but this was the big thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654137

There have been a few over the years. One I remember talked about a gamified app which is like so innovative and sad at the same time