8 ms·

Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

293 points by Lionsion 8y ago

malshe 8y ago
I can't access it on Harvard website any more. Luckily the paper is already published so if you have access to the journal, download it here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-the-chinese-government-fabricates-social-media-posts-for-strategic-distraction-not-engaged-argument/4662DB26E2685BAF1485F14369BD137C https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Lionsion 8y ago
  This link doesn't work for you? https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/how_the_chinese_government_fabricates_social_media_posts_for_strategic_distraction_not_engaged_argument.pdf https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/how_the_chinese_... It's the "article" link on the page, and it works for me right now.
  - malshe 8y ago
    Now it is working!
pteredactyl 8y ago
This is great. Please, please let this concept enter the general public's mind.
- genericone 8y ago
  Do you mean the concept that: "Any/all organizations can/do seed a particular narrative to serve their strategic purposes" ?
  - Lionsion 8y ago
    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.
    - noobermin 8y ago
      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.
    - Sangermaine 8y ago
      Don Draper: "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."
      - ngold 8y ago
        It's toasted.
- Lionsion 8y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091072
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    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.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    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.
    - Lionsion 8y ago
      > 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.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  >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.
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
    Oh Dear! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok Information/Tragedy buffer overflow attacks basically.
  - ss248 8y ago
    >Information overflow and deflection through a sheer barrage of garbage and misinformation seems to be the new Nothing new actually. The whole concept is pretty old. Looks like after trying to follow "guidelines" from Orwell's "1984", we are just trying Huxley's "Brave New World".
    - xster 8y ago
      > 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.
      - pteredactyl 8y ago
        Yea, I'd argue the whole goal of Western government operators is to create a well-oiled propaganda machine. Everything else is a negotiation.
  - 8y ago
- hungryhobo 8y ago
  please, just look at things like cambridge analytica, the west is way ahead, not just in its own countries, but others as well.
- xster 8y ago
  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 https://i.redd.it/oij2wau47fdy.jpg (though with better use of euphemisms, a game at which China is still in an infantile stage). It is as deeply ingrained as it can get in American public online discourse https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction_period=2016&disbursement_purpose_categories=other&data_type=processed&committee_id=C00578997&min_date=01%2F01%2F2015&max_date=08%2F05%2F2016 https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction...
imbokodo 8y ago
I have seen the US government doing this a lot. Example, whitewashing the No Gun Ri massacre on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri&diff=18591944&oldid=18403374 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri&diff=185... ). That one is from US Central Command Multi National Security Transition Team Iraq. Also have seen similar edits on Wikipedia from Ft. Benning/WHISC/SOA and so forth.
- Lionsion 8y ago
  You should actually read the paper. An IP user making edits to a controversial Wikipedia page is nothing like what this paper is talking about. To summarize: 1. The Chinese government has a massive, coordinated effort to post on social media to serve their propaganda goals. 2. That effort attempts to distract from things they don't want people to consider, rather than just loudly pushing the party line.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    The methods are interesting. It is worth noting however that it's not the any gov't wouldn't want to do this, or even doesn't.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fermienrico 8y ago
  This is a very typical response in a thread about China. Please stop comparing it with other nations. China's government and its modus operandi is a completely different ball game. It is not even the same sport. It only detracts from the discussion. If you would like to discuss US topics, please open a new thread and we are happy to have a conversation.
  - hungryhobo 8y ago
    but if you are criticizing something while doing the same thing, it's just hypocrisy.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
"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." Sensible. Cuts, however, against my mental caricature of an astroturfing shill.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Kind of makes you wonder how many of these operatives on here on HN. There are certainly blocs of people who downvote certain topics en masse.
  - rdlecler1 8y ago
    The more influential HN is perceived the greater the problem will be.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  > Sensible. Cuts, however, against my mental caricature of an astroturfing shill. Interesting. The confirmed astroturfer Monsanto[1] is a fairly active one, and though I can't prove some of the people I saw were Monsanto shills, I've never met a person in real life advocate on behalf of that company. Anyways, their tactics were incredibly distraction-centric and ad-hominem. As soon as anybody brought up the scientific research on pesticides, they'd start comparing this position to anti-vaccine, even completely out-of-context. It's not hard to debase a conversation so much it falls apart entirely online, which is why the technique seemed effective. [1] https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGomotion.pdf https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGo...
- kolpa 8y ago
  Cutting through the rhetoric, that means simply that CCP does bog-standard PR rhetoric. No professional in PR would deign to acknowledge the existence of critics, unless those critics are too loud to ignore.
prmths 8y ago
And water is wet. Israel is at the forefront of it https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/inside-israels-social-media-command-center/265471/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/in... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-... You mean the chinese are focused on propaganda as much as we are? As much as israel, britain, russia and everyone else? Amazing.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Why is this downvoted? All governments do propaganda, this is a well known fact. One particular interesting thing about this particular case is the scale and the focus, but do we really think other governments don't try? Even companies astroturf.
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    Isn't the comment itself a distraction, just like the ones in the main post? :)
    - noobermin 8y ago
      No, it isn't a distraction, it's actually related to the topic. A distraction along the lines of the article would be flagging this article and upvoting others. However, upvoting this and flagging comments pointing out hypocrisy can also be construed as propaganda. Seeing that across the comment section is discouraging.
  - Lionsion 8y ago
    > All governments do propaganda, this is a well known fact....Even companies astroturf. This paper isn't about that kind of propaganda, where a particular narrative gets pushed. It's about an insidious kind of propaganda where an unrelated or semi-related narrative is pushed to distract from some topic. > Why is this downvoted? Probably because it can be interpreted as a similar kind of propaganda to the kind the article describes (e.g. lets get everyone riled up about Israel such that they forget about China). I can see the loose topic-similarity aiding such a goal.
aj7 8y ago
When the NY Times covered the Chinese robotic moon landing, it was in the top 10 stories for more than a week. In the most space-jaded country on the planet. The rating was sustained by constant comments by Chinese studying in the US and burnishing their reps with the Party. You can almost always make Chinese English, an AI program could be trained to do it. I wrote to their ombudsman. Down in a day.
- MrLeap 8y ago
  What corpus did you train off?
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Sounds very Markov-chain like, doesn’t it? But I think it’s just written in an annoying way: sentences that seem short, choppy, and cut off, with very little context to string them together.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  Very interesting. I always get that uncanny valley feeling even on Hacker News, especially when the comments concern China. This would explain a lot.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    Or something like a comment thread where half the comments pointing out other governments do propaganda are flagged to hell, like this section.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      Your post is pretty much the definition of whataboutism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    - pmlnr 8y ago
      In this very case, the topic is how the country in the post is doing it. Isn't talking about another country a distraction from that?
vthallam 8y ago
T - 30 mins before this post gets buried. I don't understand despite the high upvote count, why do articles critical of China are not able to be in the first page for more than a couple hours. Also, China is the new Saudi Arabia. With the economic power, they can get away with anything and actually, you can't do anything to stop that. Even Trump who was so critical wanted to help ZTE as soon as the Chinese asked for interference.
- crazy_monkey 8y ago
  Lol, the US can get away with anything too like torture, illegal bombing, civilian casualties in a US wars, ... Maybe we should try introspecting too before assuming that others are not like us...
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    Are you joking ? How literally can you be the very essence of what this article is about? This, literally this is what that research is describing. Stop changing the bloody subject ! Gah. Edit: this account is a smoking gun. Have a look at the comment history.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Maybe grandparent was being ironic in their sarcasm?
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        We should always try to see more irony. It is a good antidote to the bullheaded self-righteous certainties that seem to plague these sorts of threads.
        seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        There is nothing more ironic than a what aboutism meeting an article about what aboutisms.
VeronicaJJ123 8y ago
And US government does not ? A lot of propaganda around Syria seems heavily managed by US government.
oldgun 8y ago
So.. kinda like Donald Trump's tweets?
pixelpp 8y ago
So does the US with it's media machine.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  Nobody is saying it doesn't, but the two things are entirely independent from each other. It's not a competition between countries, it's a question of how people of earth can get the best lives for themselves.
xmly 8y ago
How do you know it is not Russia? Maybe Russia is manipulating China and USA at the same time!
notadoc 8y ago
Does anyone think this does not happen in other countries? Maybe even in your own country (but not ours, obviously)? And not just by governments, but by political parties, foreign entities, corporations, lobbying groups, interest groups, etc, any entity with an interest in distracting, muddying, defining a narrative, or swaying opinion? And once you consider that, consider the numerous potential reasons why social media companies appear to do nothing about the huge numbers of obvious bots, astroturfers, sockpuppets, trollfarms, etc on their services. Interesting times we live in!
- titanix2 8y ago
  Yes it happens all the times from the newspapers. They select topics to cover or not (first biais) then cover it the want they want to fit their narratives (second level biais). In France, one of the most renowned newspaper (Le Monde) have a dedicated team (Les Décodeurs) to make posts about every politically sensitive topics. The official raison d'être of the team is to fight fake news, but the way they wrote is so fake-newish it becomes like an art performance.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Hungary doesn't need it. The government simply mangled any opposition media.
foodislove 8y ago
The Chinese global trollism is getting worse. From Airlines who don't label Taiwan under China to kids in primary school in Australia who paint a Taiwanese flag on a bull, the Chinese are really becoming more and more belligerent. The Chinese internet army of "hurt feelings" and stupid whataboutism and fake moral equivalence is entering HN as well. Whenver there is any negative story about china, the downvotes happen immediately and "defends of the honor of china" pop up magically throwing dirt everywhere. I'm sure when PG made this, having nationalistic Chinese trolls degrade the forum with their "China is always right" bs was probably not on the top of his mind. I wonder if we can ask the mods. Is there a pattern of downvotes whenver there isa negative story about China? I wonder if a bunch of Tencent/Alibaba "patriotic chinese" simply created lots of accounts and upvoted themselves to get to the point they can downvote across their accounts to "keep the internet clean" of anything that embarasses Xi Jinping and his stupid uneducated bimbo of a wife
- ericjang 8y ago
  I think the last remark about Xi Jinping's wife was uncalled for (I'm Taiwanese American).
  - foodislove 8y ago
    Yet it is a fact. Not only do trolls seek to degrade and destroy freedom and democracy, they defend a bunch of corrupt morons who's only real ability is to either steal or exploit their own people.
    - Lionsion 8y ago
      It might be a fact (I don't know), but certainly it detracts from your point. I think you should edit out the stuff about her.
    - che_shirecat 8y ago
      >his stupid uneducated bimbo of a wife that is most definitely not a fact, it is an opinion, namely your opinion. It's also a pointless and needlessly inflammatory insult that engenders no productive discussion. Would you say the same about the first lady of the US?
johnchristopher 8y ago
> Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim that these so-called 50c party posts vociferously argue for the government’s side in political and policy debates. As we show, this is also true of most posts openly accused on social media of being 50c. I am not a native speaker. I can't parse that sentence :/. Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ? Wouldn't it follow that posts arguing in favour of the government's side are tagged as `50c` since `50c` seems to be defined by being `pro government` ? And then: > [..] 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. If I ignore the `also` word in the first quote it all makes sense.
- yorwba 8y ago
  > Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ? It is true in addition to being claimed.
- dschuler 8y ago
  "also true" is a phrase that really means "is the case as well" (as in the previous sentence). The first sentence says that "journalists and activists" claim that if a post is written by a "50c party" poster, then it will strongly argue in favor of the Chinese government's side - instead of being more subtle, and maybe not _always_ arguing that China is 100% #1. The second sentence says that "most posts open accused on social media of being 50c" will strongly argue in favor of the government's side, too. I read this to mean that posts tagged as "50c" will argue for the Chinese government, and "50c party" posters will argue for the Chinese government, too, so the correspondence between the two is high. My interpretation could be wrong, but I hope it helps!
- elefanten 8y ago
  I read those two sentences to describe an existing misconception among BOTH (sentence 1) academics/journalists/activists AND (sentence 2) people posting on social media. The misconception is that the strategy of 50c party posters is to argue loudly from the perspective of the CCP. The following sentence in the abstract helps put it in context: "Yet, almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim, or, more importantly, for the Chinese regime's strategic objective in pursuing this activity. " This third sentence presents the paper's challenge to the supposed misconception. Therefore, the concluding quote you highlight makes perfect sense as the paper's thesis for what strategy drives 50c party posts. Edit: I agree those sentence are a bit awkward. To help parse them, eliminate some of the connecting words: 1: "Academics/journalists/activists claim 50c posts argue for government's side." 2: "This is also true of posts accused on social media of being 50c" (this = argue for government's side) 3: "Yet, no evidence exists for this claim"
kevintb 8y ago
great food for thought that applies to any public forum, whether it's infected with these massive secret governmental operations or not.
crazy_monkey 8y ago
Lol, and Trump doesn't?
meko 8y ago
I'm inclined not to trust an article that uses propaganda-rhetoric like 'regime'.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Right, so you're ignoring peer-reviewed article with hard data, analysis and conclusions in the favor of propaganda-rhetoric use of the word "regime". You're doing a disservice to yourself.
woodandsteel 8y ago
Xi is a very smart fellow, and he seems to sincerely want what is best for his country. That said, I think he is making some terrible mistakes. Instead of helping the population become smarter, better-informed thinkers, he is trying to turn them into robots. Xi is creating an illusion of unity, which means if things start to go seriously wrong, there will be an explosion, as happened so many times in China's past. Citizens will lack the sort of intelligence and ability to work together that would be needed to resolve problems, and the country likely will either fall into chaos or under the rule of a malevolent emperor. Let me add that Xi claims to be following Confucian principles, but that is not at all true. Confucianism is a set of principles that everyone from the top down was required to follow. Xi, in contrast, answers to no one, and is simply making up his own rules. To the Chinese out there, let me say that what you need to do is get your hands on all the information you can from independent sources, and study political philosophy, so that you will be in a better position to make intelligent decisions in the future.
- elefanten 8y ago
  I agree with your starting premise about Xi and your concluding advice about independent (or at least, non-Party filtered) information. But I don't think it's wise or diplomatic to phrase it as a growing "intelligence" deficit in Chinese people. That word is tricky enough to define as it is, but people can hold deeply one-sided views about a lot of things and still be highly intelligent. As a counterpoint, browsing social media in open information societies and liberal democracies these days gives a sense that people can be extremely biased and polarized even without living in a closed propaganda information ecosystem. With that criticism lodged, I agree with the spirit of your argument that a more filtered public discourse very likely makes it monotonically incrementally harder to patch any present or future social discord.
  - woodandsteel 8y ago
    >But I don't think it's wise or diplomatic to phrase it as a growing "intelligence" deficit in Chinese people. That word is tricky enough to define as it is, but people can hold deeply one-sided views about a lot of things and still be highly intelligent. I think the term "intelligent" has more than one meaning, and one of them is what I was trying to get at, something like "able to act in an effective manner." But perhaps you can suggest a less ambiguous term.
pow_pp_-1_v 8y ago
Interesting. The whole thing is so simple. A government wants to get their message out quickly and efficiently before negative stories get too much attention. So, how to do it cost effectively? Simple, ask normal government employees to write pro-government posts on social media when they get time. Plus their career prospects improve if they do it. Finally a reminder on certain days about their duty to spread the good news about the government. I guess the only weakness in the whole scheme is people reporting back to an authority about their work. I am pretty sure they got rid of that after the leak. The genius of this thing is that if you ask the people who write these posts if they are doing propaganda, there's a good chance that their initial genuine response will be to say no.
- rapind 8y ago
  I briefly worked at a (US) company who upon hiring you provided you with copy to post on both LinkedIn and Glassdoor. I genuinely liked the people so I didn't object or even mention how tasteless this was. Instead I just bailed. Same shit IMO.
- yorwba 8y ago
  > if you ask the people who write these posts if they are doing propaganda, there's a good chance that their initial genuine response will be to say no. Actually, they'll probably say yes. Most Chinese do not think of propaganda as something negative. Every student club at my university has an unironically named "propaganda department" that manages their social media. "Propaganda" just never underwent the value shift that happened in other countries, so although there's a translation of "PR" almost nobody uses the word.
jonathanyc 8y ago
We should definitely be wary of attempts by the Chinese government to distract from meaningful discussion. It’s worth remembering that leftist organizations in the US and around the world during the Cold War were sometimes funded by the Soviet Union. At the same time, I am reminded of how organizations that in hindsight we know were definitely not funded by the Soviet Union were accused of exactly that during the 50s and 60s. For example, we now know that at one point the KGB and the FBI were concurrently running smear campaigns against MLK. In that light, I’m skeptical of Lionsion’s motives in posting this. Yesterday he was rightfully called out by some including me for writing of Chinese internment camps in Xinjiang that > These camps appear to be the result of high-level Chinese government policy that explicitly targets this ethic group. There are no contemporary parallels in the US. If you think there are, do you think Obama was in on it? The US situation is unfortunate, but it's more the result of poverty and lower-level racism, not a policy to imprison blacks. The whataboutism in his last statement of course goes against the consensus of US academics studying criminal justice issues, the consensus of criminal justice advocates, as well as what (again, thanks to the passage of time) we now know about the deliberate decisions of politicians leading up to the War on Drugs: https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... I think Hacker News should place where we can have a civil discussions about issues. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we are able to have multiple (not just one!) threads and thus to discuss multiple topics. And as I have said previously, most of us can both walk and chew gum at the same time; if someone is unable to even read comments discussing US education reform on an article by an American looking at the Swedish education system, for example, without being “distracted,” I think that’s more of an issue for the easily-distracted person than for the discussants. But the strange trend of accusing everyone who would like to discuss the relevance of an issue to the US of being funded by the Chinese government is as intellectually demeaning as it should be rhetorically suspect. I’d be happy to prove that I’m an American citizen not funded by the Chinese or any other government, but I think that might be relatively hard to prove in a fair and respectful way over the Internet. On the other hand, it is much easier to look at someone’s public comment history and to see the unsettling trends there. More generally, I’m getting tired of having to battle this recent uptick in China scaremongering on what used to be a much more reasonable forum. Lionsion’s account is very new, and I wonder if they are part of the recent influx of new users who have arrived with their own bad habits. Seriously, check the account creation date for users who post things that seem to be weird pro-China or anti-China propaganda. They seem to mostly have been made around 2016.
hungryhobo 8y ago
American propaganda at its finest.
rajacombinator 8y ago
American govt fabricates wars for social distraction, China needs to step their game up!
886 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
mindfulhack 8y ago
I love it when we have moments like this where truth comes out (in the form of scientific research if need be) that previously was moronically dismissed (by people including government shills I'm sure) as 'conspiracy theory'. Snowden and NSA spying was another one. Truth is not as boring as they may make you want to believe. The world is very, VERY interesting and you just have to discover it.
xster 8y ago
This is literally and exactly what Correct The Record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record) is and is as standard as it gets in American political discourse online https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction_period=2016&disbursement_purpose_categories=other&data_type=processed&committee_id=C00578997&min_date=01%2F01%2F2015&max_date=08%2F05%2F2016 https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction....
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > This is literally and exactly what Correct The Record [...] is No, it's not. Propaganda by competing domestic partisan interest groups seeking to influence elections in their own country is not “literally and exactly” the same thing as state sponsored propaganda.
  - xster 8y ago
    Ah, I see where we might disagree on. I think you would argue that from the perspective of the propaganda targets, the CCP is the establishment vying to influence public opinion and American political parties are not. They're simply political instruments in a machinery that then determines what becomes the establishment. I'm not saying it's a binary dichotomy but I'm more leaning on the side that <oversimplification> there are no American 'political parties' in the sense that the Green Party will never be like the Canadian NDP etc </oversimplification> and the 'parties' is just an established, acceptable non-real-power-threatening Overton Window that directs shared class concerns and energy into a black hole of oxygen draining wedge issue arena. The establishment is the establishment and money is the establishment and from that perspective, I would argue CTR is a class interest group rather than a partisan interest group. Anyway. I think we disagree but I think it's the context we disagree on.
mike_n 8y ago
as if we don't have our own Wag-the-Dog-ish distractions also?
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  This itself is a distraction. There is no "us," "we," or "them"
equalunique 8y ago
Political entities linked to the US government do this too.

293 points by Lionsion 8y ago

I can't access it on Harvard website any more. Luckily the paper is already published so if you have access to the journal, download it here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-the-chinese-government-fabricates-social-media-posts-for-strategic-distraction-not-engaged-argument/4662DB26E2685BAF1485F14369BD137C https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Lionsion 8y ago
This link doesn't work for you? https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/how_the_chinese_government_fabricates_social_media_posts_for_strategic_distraction_not_engaged_argument.pdf https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/how_the_chinese_... It's the "article" link on the page, and it works for me right now.
- malshe 8y ago
  Now it is working!

pteredactyl 8y ago

This is great. Please, please let this concept enter the general public's mind.

genericone 8y ago
Do you mean the concept that: "Any/all organizations can/do seed a particular narrative to serve their strategic purposes" ?
- Lionsion 8y ago
  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.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    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.
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    Don Draper: "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."
    - ngold 8y ago
      It's toasted.
Lionsion 8y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091072
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  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.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  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.
  - Lionsion 8y ago
    > 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.
Barrin92 8y ago
>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.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  Oh Dear! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok Information/Tragedy buffer overflow attacks basically.
- ss248 8y ago
  >Information overflow and deflection through a sheer barrage of garbage and misinformation seems to be the new Nothing new actually. The whole concept is pretty old. Looks like after trying to follow "guidelines" from Orwell's "1984", we are just trying Huxley's "Brave New World".
  - xster 8y ago
    > 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.
    - pteredactyl 8y ago
      Yea, I'd argue the whole goal of Western government operators is to create a well-oiled propaganda machine. Everything else is a negotiation.
- 8y ago
hungryhobo 8y ago
please, just look at things like cambridge analytica, the west is way ahead, not just in its own countries, but others as well.
xster 8y ago
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 https://i.redd.it/oij2wau47fdy.jpg (though with better use of euphemisms, a game at which China is still in an infantile stage). It is as deeply ingrained as it can get in American public online discourse https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction_period=2016&disbursement_purpose_categories=other&data_type=processed&committee_id=C00578997&min_date=01%2F01%2F2015&max_date=08%2F05%2F2016 https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction...

imbokodo 8y ago

I have seen the US government doing this a lot. Example, whitewashing the No Gun Ri massacre on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri&diff=18591944&oldid=18403374 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri&diff=185... ). That one is from US Central Command Multi National Security Transition Team Iraq. Also have seen similar edits on Wikipedia from Ft. Benning/WHISC/SOA and so forth.

Lionsion 8y ago
You should actually read the paper. An IP user making edits to a controversial Wikipedia page is nothing like what this paper is talking about. To summarize: 1. The Chinese government has a massive, coordinated effort to post on social media to serve their propaganda goals. 2. That effort attempts to distract from things they don't want people to consider, rather than just loudly pushing the party line.
- noobermin 8y ago
  The methods are interesting. It is worth noting however that it's not the any gov't wouldn't want to do this, or even doesn't.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fermienrico 8y ago
This is a very typical response in a thread about China. Please stop comparing it with other nations. China's government and its modus operandi is a completely different ball game. It is not even the same sport. It only detracts from the discussion. If you would like to discuss US topics, please open a new thread and we are happy to have a conversation.
- hungryhobo 8y ago
  but if you are criticizing something while doing the same thing, it's just hypocrisy.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

"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." Sensible. Cuts, however, against my mental caricature of an astroturfing shill.

reaperducer 8y ago
Kind of makes you wonder how many of these operatives on here on HN. There are certainly blocs of people who downvote certain topics en masse.
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  The more influential HN is perceived the greater the problem will be.
alexandercrohde 8y ago
> Sensible. Cuts, however, against my mental caricature of an astroturfing shill. Interesting. The confirmed astroturfer Monsanto[1] is a fairly active one, and though I can't prove some of the people I saw were Monsanto shills, I've never met a person in real life advocate on behalf of that company. Anyways, their tactics were incredibly distraction-centric and ad-hominem. As soon as anybody brought up the scientific research on pesticides, they'd start comparing this position to anti-vaccine, even completely out-of-context. It's not hard to debase a conversation so much it falls apart entirely online, which is why the technique seemed effective. [1] https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGomotion.pdf https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGo...
kolpa 8y ago
Cutting through the rhetoric, that means simply that CCP does bog-standard PR rhetoric. No professional in PR would deign to acknowledge the existence of critics, unless those critics are too loud to ignore.

prmths 8y ago

And water is wet. Israel is at the forefront of it https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/inside-israels-social-media-command-center/265471/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/in... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-... You mean the chinese are focused on propaganda as much as we are? As much as israel, britain, russia and everyone else? Amazing.

noobermin 8y ago
Why is this downvoted? All governments do propaganda, this is a well known fact. One particular interesting thing about this particular case is the scale and the focus, but do we really think other governments don't try? Even companies astroturf.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Isn't the comment itself a distraction, just like the ones in the main post? :)
  - noobermin 8y ago
    No, it isn't a distraction, it's actually related to the topic. A distraction along the lines of the article would be flagging this article and upvoting others. However, upvoting this and flagging comments pointing out hypocrisy can also be construed as propaganda. Seeing that across the comment section is discouraging.
- Lionsion 8y ago
  > All governments do propaganda, this is a well known fact....Even companies astroturf. This paper isn't about that kind of propaganda, where a particular narrative gets pushed. It's about an insidious kind of propaganda where an unrelated or semi-related narrative is pushed to distract from some topic. > Why is this downvoted? Probably because it can be interpreted as a similar kind of propaganda to the kind the article describes (e.g. lets get everyone riled up about Israel such that they forget about China). I can see the loose topic-similarity aiding such a goal.

aj7 8y ago

When the NY Times covered the Chinese robotic moon landing, it was in the top 10 stories for more than a week. In the most space-jaded country on the planet. The rating was sustained by constant comments by Chinese studying in the US and burnishing their reps with the Party. You can almost always make Chinese English, an AI program could be trained to do it. I wrote to their ombudsman. Down in a day.

MrLeap 8y ago
What corpus did you train off?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Sounds very Markov-chain like, doesn’t it? But I think it’s just written in an annoying way: sentences that seem short, choppy, and cut off, with very little context to string them together.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Very interesting. I always get that uncanny valley feeling even on Hacker News, especially when the comments concern China. This would explain a lot.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Or something like a comment thread where half the comments pointing out other governments do propaganda are flagged to hell, like this section.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    Your post is pretty much the definition of whataboutism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    In this very case, the topic is how the country in the post is doing it. Isn't talking about another country a distraction from that?

vthallam 8y ago

T - 30 mins before this post gets buried. I don't understand despite the high upvote count, why do articles critical of China are not able to be in the first page for more than a couple hours. Also, China is the new Saudi Arabia. With the economic power, they can get away with anything and actually, you can't do anything to stop that. Even Trump who was so critical wanted to help ZTE as soon as the Chinese asked for interference.

crazy_monkey 8y ago
Lol, the US can get away with anything too like torture, illegal bombing, civilian casualties in a US wars, ... Maybe we should try introspecting too before assuming that others are not like us...
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  Are you joking ? How literally can you be the very essence of what this article is about? This, literally this is what that research is describing. Stop changing the bloody subject ! Gah. Edit: this account is a smoking gun. Have a look at the comment history.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Maybe grandparent was being ironic in their sarcasm?
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      We should always try to see more irony. It is a good antidote to the bullheaded self-righteous certainties that seem to plague these sorts of threads.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        There is nothing more ironic than a what aboutism meeting an article about what aboutisms.

VeronicaJJ123 8y ago

And US government does not ? A lot of propaganda around Syria seems heavily managed by US government.

oldgun 8y ago

So.. kinda like Donald Trump's tweets?

pixelpp 8y ago

So does the US with it's media machine.

alexandercrohde 8y ago
Nobody is saying it doesn't, but the two things are entirely independent from each other. It's not a competition between countries, it's a question of how people of earth can get the best lives for themselves.

xmly 8y ago

How do you know it is not Russia? Maybe Russia is manipulating China and USA at the same time!

notadoc 8y ago

Does anyone think this does not happen in other countries? Maybe even in your own country (but not ours, obviously)? And not just by governments, but by political parties, foreign entities, corporations, lobbying groups, interest groups, etc, any entity with an interest in distracting, muddying, defining a narrative, or swaying opinion? And once you consider that, consider the numerous potential reasons why social media companies appear to do nothing about the huge numbers of obvious bots, astroturfers, sockpuppets, trollfarms, etc on their services. Interesting times we live in!

titanix2 8y ago
Yes it happens all the times from the newspapers. They select topics to cover or not (first biais) then cover it the want they want to fit their narratives (second level biais). In France, one of the most renowned newspaper (Le Monde) have a dedicated team (Les Décodeurs) to make posts about every politically sensitive topics. The official raison d'être of the team is to fight fake news, but the way they wrote is so fake-newish it becomes like an art performance.
pmlnr 8y ago
Hungary doesn't need it. The government simply mangled any opposition media.

foodislove 8y ago

The Chinese global trollism is getting worse. From Airlines who don't label Taiwan under China to kids in primary school in Australia who paint a Taiwanese flag on a bull, the Chinese are really becoming more and more belligerent. The Chinese internet army of "hurt feelings" and stupid whataboutism and fake moral equivalence is entering HN as well. Whenver there is any negative story about china, the downvotes happen immediately and "defends of the honor of china" pop up magically throwing dirt everywhere. I'm sure when PG made this, having nationalistic Chinese trolls degrade the forum with their "China is always right" bs was probably not on the top of his mind. I wonder if we can ask the mods. Is there a pattern of downvotes whenver there isa negative story about China? I wonder if a bunch of Tencent/Alibaba "patriotic chinese" simply created lots of accounts and upvoted themselves to get to the point they can downvote across their accounts to "keep the internet clean" of anything that embarasses Xi Jinping and his stupid uneducated bimbo of a wife

ericjang 8y ago
I think the last remark about Xi Jinping's wife was uncalled for (I'm Taiwanese American).
- foodislove 8y ago
  Yet it is a fact. Not only do trolls seek to degrade and destroy freedom and democracy, they defend a bunch of corrupt morons who's only real ability is to either steal or exploit their own people.
  - Lionsion 8y ago
    It might be a fact (I don't know), but certainly it detracts from your point. I think you should edit out the stuff about her.
  - che_shirecat 8y ago
    >his stupid uneducated bimbo of a wife that is most definitely not a fact, it is an opinion, namely your opinion. It's also a pointless and needlessly inflammatory insult that engenders no productive discussion. Would you say the same about the first lady of the US?

johnchristopher 8y ago

> Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim that these so-called 50c party posts vociferously argue for the government’s side in political and policy debates. As we show, this is also true of most posts openly accused on social media of being 50c. I am not a native speaker. I can't parse that sentence :/. Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ? Wouldn't it follow that posts arguing in favour of the government's side are tagged as `50c` since `50c` seems to be defined by being `pro government` ? And then: > [..] 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. If I ignore the `also` word in the first quote it all makes sense.

yorwba 8y ago
> Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ? It is true in addition to being claimed.
dschuler 8y ago
"also true" is a phrase that really means "is the case as well" (as in the previous sentence). The first sentence says that "journalists and activists" claim that if a post is written by a "50c party" poster, then it will strongly argue in favor of the Chinese government's side - instead of being more subtle, and maybe not _always_ arguing that China is 100% #1. The second sentence says that "most posts open accused on social media of being 50c" will strongly argue in favor of the government's side, too. I read this to mean that posts tagged as "50c" will argue for the Chinese government, and "50c party" posters will argue for the Chinese government, too, so the correspondence between the two is high. My interpretation could be wrong, but I hope it helps!
elefanten 8y ago
I read those two sentences to describe an existing misconception among BOTH (sentence 1) academics/journalists/activists AND (sentence 2) people posting on social media. The misconception is that the strategy of 50c party posters is to argue loudly from the perspective of the CCP. The following sentence in the abstract helps put it in context: "Yet, almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim, or, more importantly, for the Chinese regime's strategic objective in pursuing this activity. " This third sentence presents the paper's challenge to the supposed misconception. Therefore, the concluding quote you highlight makes perfect sense as the paper's thesis for what strategy drives 50c party posts. Edit: I agree those sentence are a bit awkward. To help parse them, eliminate some of the connecting words: 1: "Academics/journalists/activists claim 50c posts argue for government's side." 2: "This is also true of posts accused on social media of being 50c" (this = argue for government's side) 3: "Yet, no evidence exists for this claim"

kevintb 8y ago

great food for thought that applies to any public forum, whether it's infected with these massive secret governmental operations or not.

crazy_monkey 8y ago

Lol, and Trump doesn't?

meko 8y ago

I'm inclined not to trust an article that uses propaganda-rhetoric like 'regime'.

fermienrico 8y ago
Right, so you're ignoring peer-reviewed article with hard data, analysis and conclusions in the favor of propaganda-rhetoric use of the word "regime". You're doing a disservice to yourself.

woodandsteel 8y ago

Xi is a very smart fellow, and he seems to sincerely want what is best for his country. That said, I think he is making some terrible mistakes. Instead of helping the population become smarter, better-informed thinkers, he is trying to turn them into robots. Xi is creating an illusion of unity, which means if things start to go seriously wrong, there will be an explosion, as happened so many times in China's past. Citizens will lack the sort of intelligence and ability to work together that would be needed to resolve problems, and the country likely will either fall into chaos or under the rule of a malevolent emperor. Let me add that Xi claims to be following Confucian principles, but that is not at all true. Confucianism is a set of principles that everyone from the top down was required to follow. Xi, in contrast, answers to no one, and is simply making up his own rules. To the Chinese out there, let me say that what you need to do is get your hands on all the information you can from independent sources, and study political philosophy, so that you will be in a better position to make intelligent decisions in the future.

elefanten 8y ago
I agree with your starting premise about Xi and your concluding advice about independent (or at least, non-Party filtered) information. But I don't think it's wise or diplomatic to phrase it as a growing "intelligence" deficit in Chinese people. That word is tricky enough to define as it is, but people can hold deeply one-sided views about a lot of things and still be highly intelligent. As a counterpoint, browsing social media in open information societies and liberal democracies these days gives a sense that people can be extremely biased and polarized even without living in a closed propaganda information ecosystem. With that criticism lodged, I agree with the spirit of your argument that a more filtered public discourse very likely makes it monotonically incrementally harder to patch any present or future social discord.
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  >But I don't think it's wise or diplomatic to phrase it as a growing "intelligence" deficit in Chinese people. That word is tricky enough to define as it is, but people can hold deeply one-sided views about a lot of things and still be highly intelligent. I think the term "intelligent" has more than one meaning, and one of them is what I was trying to get at, something like "able to act in an effective manner." But perhaps you can suggest a less ambiguous term.

pow_pp_-1_v 8y ago

Interesting. The whole thing is so simple. A government wants to get their message out quickly and efficiently before negative stories get too much attention. So, how to do it cost effectively? Simple, ask normal government employees to write pro-government posts on social media when they get time. Plus their career prospects improve if they do it. Finally a reminder on certain days about their duty to spread the good news about the government. I guess the only weakness in the whole scheme is people reporting back to an authority about their work. I am pretty sure they got rid of that after the leak. The genius of this thing is that if you ask the people who write these posts if they are doing propaganda, there's a good chance that their initial genuine response will be to say no.

rapind 8y ago
I briefly worked at a (US) company who upon hiring you provided you with copy to post on both LinkedIn and Glassdoor. I genuinely liked the people so I didn't object or even mention how tasteless this was. Instead I just bailed. Same shit IMO.
yorwba 8y ago
> if you ask the people who write these posts if they are doing propaganda, there's a good chance that their initial genuine response will be to say no. Actually, they'll probably say yes. Most Chinese do not think of propaganda as something negative. Every student club at my university has an unironically named "propaganda department" that manages their social media. "Propaganda" just never underwent the value shift that happened in other countries, so although there's a translation of "PR" almost nobody uses the word.

jonathanyc 8y ago

We should definitely be wary of attempts by the Chinese government to distract from meaningful discussion. It’s worth remembering that leftist organizations in the US and around the world during the Cold War were sometimes funded by the Soviet Union. At the same time, I am reminded of how organizations that in hindsight we know were definitely not funded by the Soviet Union were accused of exactly that during the 50s and 60s. For example, we now know that at one point the KGB and the FBI were concurrently running smear campaigns against MLK. In that light, I’m skeptical of Lionsion’s motives in posting this. Yesterday he was rightfully called out by some including me for writing of Chinese internment camps in Xinjiang that > These camps appear to be the result of high-level Chinese government policy that explicitly targets this ethic group. There are no contemporary parallels in the US. If you think there are, do you think Obama was in on it? The US situation is unfortunate, but it's more the result of poverty and lower-level racism, not a policy to imprison blacks. The whataboutism in his last statement of course goes against the consensus of US academics studying criminal justice issues, the consensus of criminal justice advocates, as well as what (again, thanks to the passage of time) we now know about the deliberate decisions of politicians leading up to the War on Drugs: https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs https://www.aclu.org/other/race-war-drugs https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... I think Hacker News should place where we can have a civil discussions about issues. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we are able to have multiple (not just one!) threads and thus to discuss multiple topics. And as I have said previously, most of us can both walk and chew gum at the same time; if someone is unable to even read comments discussing US education reform on an article by an American looking at the Swedish education system, for example, without being “distracted,” I think that’s more of an issue for the easily-distracted person than for the discussants. But the strange trend of accusing everyone who would like to discuss the relevance of an issue to the US of being funded by the Chinese government is as intellectually demeaning as it should be rhetorically suspect. I’d be happy to prove that I’m an American citizen not funded by the Chinese or any other government, but I think that might be relatively hard to prove in a fair and respectful way over the Internet. On the other hand, it is much easier to look at someone’s public comment history and to see the unsettling trends there. More generally, I’m getting tired of having to battle this recent uptick in China scaremongering on what used to be a much more reasonable forum. Lionsion’s account is very new, and I wonder if they are part of the recent influx of new users who have arrived with their own bad habits. Seriously, check the account creation date for users who post things that seem to be weird pro-China or anti-China propaganda. They seem to mostly have been made around 2016.

hungryhobo 8y ago

American propaganda at its finest.

rajacombinator 8y ago

American govt fabricates wars for social distraction, China needs to step their game up!

886 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

mindfulhack 8y ago

I love it when we have moments like this where truth comes out (in the form of scientific research if need be) that previously was moronically dismissed (by people including government shills I'm sure) as 'conspiracy theory'. Snowden and NSA spying was another one. Truth is not as boring as they may make you want to believe. The world is very, VERY interesting and you just have to discover it.

xster 8y ago

This is literally and exactly what Correct The Record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record) is and is as standard as it gets in American political discourse online https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction_period=2016&disbursement_purpose_categories=other&data_type=processed&committee_id=C00578997&min_date=01%2F01%2F2015&max_date=08%2F05%2F2016 https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction....

dragonwriter 8y ago
> This is literally and exactly what Correct The Record [...] is No, it's not. Propaganda by competing domestic partisan interest groups seeking to influence elections in their own country is not “literally and exactly” the same thing as state sponsored propaganda.
- xster 8y ago
  Ah, I see where we might disagree on. I think you would argue that from the perspective of the propaganda targets, the CCP is the establishment vying to influence public opinion and American political parties are not. They're simply political instruments in a machinery that then determines what becomes the establishment. I'm not saying it's a binary dichotomy but I'm more leaning on the side that <oversimplification> there are no American 'political parties' in the sense that the Green Party will never be like the Canadian NDP etc </oversimplification> and the 'parties' is just an established, acceptable non-real-power-threatening Overton Window that directs shared class concerns and energy into a black hole of oxygen draining wedge issue arena. The establishment is the establishment and money is the establishment and from that perspective, I would argue CTR is a class interest group rather than a partisan interest group. Anyway. I think we disagree but I think it's the context we disagree on.

mike_n 8y ago

as if we don't have our own Wag-the-Dog-ish distractions also?

alexandercrohde 8y ago
This itself is a distraction. There is no "us," "we," or "them"

equalunique 8y ago

Political entities linked to the US government do this too.