
Notepad++ issues attacked by Chinese commenters - shp0ngle
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues
======
favorited
Good on the Notepad++ devs. They've had Tiananmen-themed release notes in the
past as well.

Edit:

Remember when GitHub started allowing removing issues, rather than just
closing them? People got all wound up saying that issues shouldn't be totally
removed and there should be a public record of the maintainer closing it.

This is a perfect example of what that feature enables. The maintainers can,
if they want, just go in and remove all these issue reports. It totally
removes any power that troll accounts have.

~~~
thinkingemote
From the notes:

"People will tell me again to not mix politics with software/business. Doing
so surely impacts the popularity of Notepad++: talking about politics is
exactly what software and commercial companies generally try to avoid. The
problem is, if we don’t deal with politics, politics will deal with us. We can
choose to not act when people are being oppressed, but when it’s our turn to
be oppressed, it will be too late and there will be no one for us. You don’t
need to be Uyghur or a Muslim to act, you need only to be a human and have
empathy for our fellow humans."

~~~
tareqak
I have wondered about the following question in roundabout ways, but this note
has finally made the phrasing clear to me: if humanity finds a way to weed out
the people who speak up for themselves and for others over a long-enough time
scale, then what happens to humanity game-theoretically in that scale and on a
longer scale? Please feel free to replace “humanity” with “a population” if it
helps you think of an answer.

Edit: replaced “in terms of game theory” with “game-theoretically”.

~~~
endymi0n
My take on this is that it's not possible on a long enough time scale. If you
try to curtail freedom of knowledge and trade, eventually you will get
artifacts that will slow down the progress of your society (just look at the
Github bans). Look at how hopelessly antiquated "parallel" societies like the
ex-GDR, North Korea or Cuba have become.

North Korea still holds out as they completely closed down their population.
But if you try to have all the good parts of western society while still
limiting intellectual freedom, I think all of this will come apart eventually.
Travel from and to China is not severely limited, and eventually there will be
an influx and a core cell of Chinese people wanting to have the same freedoms
for their country.

Fighting those minds will show the true faces of any authoritarian regime,
which in turn will get more people upset. I think in these days of full
technical mind control, it will be an interesting excercise in how long a
government can keep this critical mass contained and intimidated.

But once they can get some visibility and they hit a weak spot in the regime,
it's usually over:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_demonstrations_in_East_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_demonstrations_in_East_Germany)

The human mind is meant to be free. Any dictatorship is actively working at
destroying itself.

------
0xcase
GitHub should take a stand and remove the accounts of everyone involved. No
matter if they're spreading Chinese Nationalism and attacking people over it
or those who think it's an excuse to use racist swear words against Asians.
This should be a platform for collaboration, behavior like in a YouTube
comment section shouldn't be tolerated

~~~
flohofwoe
The accounts used in those scripted attacks are obviously throw-aways,
removing them won't change a thing.

~~~
hokkos
I see a lot of legit account but used sporadically.

~~~
tandr
Sometimes these are "sleepers" accounts, and they are very valuable in
astroturfing and trolling business. Not all of them - I suspect some people
are real, and upset about "some developer teaching us how to live".

I wouldn't surprised if there is a quite significant chunk of accounts on any
soc media sites that are dormant until "the call" comes in.

------
riffraff
Respect for people who take a stand for important issues.

I understand the value of not wanting to bring politics into a shared large
tech community, but at the same time you should be able to do what you want
with your own software, and using it to push your ideals is legit.

We must remember though that this should also apply to ideas we don't agree
with.

------
LilBytes
What the fuck is happening here? Context?

Edit: "Notepad++ v7.8.1: Free Uyghur"

I love it.

------
thinkingemote
I am finding it fascinating looking at the abusive accounts and their
repositories and history of issues and pull requests over various other
repositories.

I wonder if some kind of pattern could be apparent? (Currently the few
accounts I have visited are front end JS developers) Could some of them be
active in your own communities?

~~~
ahbyb
So they should be ostracised for not thinking like the West wants them to
think?

My issue with this is that some people think that all online supporters of the
Chinese government are paid shills or just bots. It might surprise you to know
that there are normal Chinese people, just like you and I, that simply like
things are going in China. I see no reason to disrespect or ostracise them for
their politics.

~~~
thinkingemote
Oh I actually think they _are_ normal people. And that's why it's interesting
and important.

A simple reason why is imagine not having to have a paid online army or
coordinate a sophisticated bot attack when your population will do it
voluntarily and with enthusiasm.

The more complex reason is more interesting and it really is about the freedom
to think and speak but it's also where criticism of China as a state is
considered to be an attack on the people and where even telling the truth must
be sacrificed for stability. China has the myth that it is stable because it
has lost so much blood in the past therefore the stability is more important
than human rights or the truth. It's actually why Muslims and Hong Kong are
attacked, literally because their existence shows that China is not whole or
stable. It's frightening and most Chinese people will rather not rock the
boat.

This "attack" on GitHub is actually a defense.

~~~
thewholeview
I usually go on the offense here with this account to try to preach the other
side of story in a justified manner as possible. But I do want to just note on
this to say I love the way you portrayed the actual situation versus many,
it's very on spot and I wish others would recognize the situation the way you
do.

------
julianlam
NodeBB team here. We host Notepad++'s forum. We're keeping an eye out for
suspicious activity on the forum as well, as these types of spam dumps occur
often.

That said, the Notepad++ forum has been the target of a low level DoS attack
for the past month...

------
hkitdog
Notepad++ devs are doing the right thing.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I prefer my software politics free, but it's their right in my opinion to do
it, and mine to choose whether or not to use the software.

~~~
zouhair
So you don't use any Free Software at all?

------
timendum
I love how many comments are anti-USA, but the author is from France.

~~~
stjohnswarts
"France" you mean :)

~~~
creshal
[https://donho.github.io/](https://donho.github.io/) Looks pretty French to
me.

------
b0ner_t0ner
Here is what happens when you speak out against the Chinese government:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dp5422/dont_becom...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dp5422/dont_become_chinese_advice_from_a_chinese/)

------
dgellow
Triggered by the blog post announcing the relase of "Notepad++ v7.8.1 : Free
Uyghur".

[https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-
edition/](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-edition/)

Excerpt from the blog post:

> At least 120,000 members of Kashgar’s Muslim Uyghur minority have been
> detained in Xinjiang’s re-education camps which aim to change the political
> thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs.
> Reports from the World Uyghur Congress submitted to the United Nations in
> July 2018 suggest that 1 million Uyghurs are currently being held in the re-
> education camps.

> Here are some actions you can take to help them: [https://uhrp.org/what-you-
> can-do](https://uhrp.org/what-you-can-do)

> The fact you have just learned such information is already an action in and
> of itself. But you can involve more people to focus on this issue and
> hopefully apply additional pressure on the Chinese government to stop their
> oppressive actions and crimes concerning the Uyghur people. People will tell
> me again to not mix politics with software/business. Doing so surely impacts
> the popularity of Notepad++: talking about politics is exactly what software
> and commercial companies generally try to avoid. The problem is, if we don’t
> deal with politics, politics will deal with us. We can choose to not act
> when people are being oppressed, but when it’s our turn to be oppressed, it
> will be too late and there will be no one for us. You don’t need to be
> Uyghur or a Muslim to act, you need only to be a human and have empathy for
> our fellow humans.

> Hence Notepad++ Free Uyghur Edition:

~~~
aembleton
Cache because the notepad++ website is currently unavailable:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dMqHQf...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dMqHQfpMBI0J:https://notepad-
plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-edition/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

------
chocolatkey
Are they maybe irritated at the author because they won't be able to use N++
anymore in China due to censorship? Or is that a silly idea. Some of the
issues seem to just be made of text that's purposefully made to be censored,
including e.g. "winnie the pooh". Or maybe they're trying to show that they're
"good citizens"...

Update: looks like 4chan has started their trolling...

~~~
jeroenhd
Reading the few comments that were (machine) translated into English, it seems
they are angry that the dev dared to speak badly about their country.

This is just Chinese people being angry at someone calling out China for its
concentration camps.

~~~
Freak_NL
There seem to be two groups of commenters. Chinese — who I suspect are mostly
self-appointed keyboard warriors, not some government backed troll-factory
like the Russians have — and trolls trolling the trolls — e.g., imageboard
counterculture; these are the commenters mostly just copy/pasting the keywords
that get services and Chinese netizens banned or flagged.

If there is a coherent English comment in there anywhere making a reasonable
case (i.e., beyond not liking it) for not including a phrase like 'Free
Uyghur' in their release notes, I haven't found it.

~~~
Hamuko
Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of that famous Chinese copypasta.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/a5cq6g/a_copypas...](https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/a5cq6g/a_copypasta_that_causes_china_to_ban_the_site/)

------
have_faith
How did this post move from page 1 to page 4 so quickly? in the space of
pressing the back button.

~~~
infinity0
hacker news has automated algorithms to deprioritise posts it autodetects as
"controversial" or "troll bait"

~~~
edjroot
Wow, I didn't know the effect of the deprioritization was so strong. Now I
wonder if there's some unofficial HN client that sorts by "controversial"
(just like Reddit).

~~~
yorwba
[https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active)
(via [https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)
)

~~~
blaser-waffle
That's not controversial though, just what is seeing a lot of posts and
voting. That could _imply_ it's controversial or trollbait, but not per se.

------
cltsang
Will probably be downvoted to oblivion:

This incident is a perfect example showing why embracing China and hoping they
would be more open to modern values like freedom of speech, democracy, etc.,
is a total illusion.

Too many Chinese people are brainwashed to the core that even if the great
firewall is switched off today, nothing will change. The currently brainwashed
people simply despise anything against Chinese official rhetoric; they don't
put any thoughts to follow other people's reasons. And this brainwashing will
pass on from one generation to the next.

I've met too many mainland Chinese use only Baidu to search, use only WeChat
to do messaging, read only Weibo and watch only CCTV to update themselves on
current affairs, even when they are physically outside of China. Sure there
are still some reasonable Chinese, but 9.9 times out of 10 they are very
reluctant to speak up, since they still have some stakes in China. If they do
speak up, their family back in China will get locked up, harrased, wealth get
taken, you name it. It happens all the time.

That's why powerful external force is necessary for China to change. And if we
don't force China to change, China will erode the rest of the world's modern
values, which is the foundation of our civilization. China's export of
oppression, like recent news about NBA and Apple, has been actually on-going
for a very long time. In Hong Kong here, we see it all the time all around us.

~~~
creshal
> And if we don't force China to change, China will erode the rest of the
> world's modern values

There's another option: Treat them like North Korea. No trade in, no trade
out, let them be whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone outside
China.

It's the least profitable option, of course, but much easier to pull off than
overthrowing a government armed with nuclear weapons, and un-brainwashing over
a billion people.

~~~
cltsang
Agree. But the tricky part is that it requires us to overcome our greed.

And we also have to abandon 1.3 billion people in the process. For example,
people in North Korea are starving[0]. It's just we don't pay much attention
to it. Is this evil necessary?

[0]
[https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037831](https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037831)

~~~
creshal
> And we also have to abandon 1.3 billion people in the process. For example,
> people in North Korea are starving[0]. It's just we don't pay much attention
> to it. Is this evil necessary?

 _Can_ we save them all? We've given North Korea free grain shipments before
to help their population, the government just resold it for cash. And we can't
topple a government that's willing to use nuclear weapons just to stay in
power.

At some point you just have to wait for a better chance. The Soviet bloc was
just as unjust and abusive, but before Gorbachev, there was simply no chance
of getting rid of it without a hundred million dead in the process. We can
only hope that North Korea (or China, hypothetically) appoint benign reformers
at some point.

------
infinity0
Obviously, exposing state surveillance and oppression is a good thing.

However a lot of western media and commenters conflate this by adding their
own propaganda twists into their message, either surreptitiously (being anti-
Chinese and using "freedom" as an excuse to attack China) or perhaps
innocently without realising it (ignorantly, thinking their are really about
"freedom" and not realising their own prejudices). This unnecessarily inflames
the situation and a more balanced message would have worked better without
triggering the sensitivities of very nationalist people.

> The Uyghurs are not ethnically Chinese but live in China’s so-called
> autonomous Xinjiang region. The region’s name suggests the Uyghurs have
> autonomy and self-governance.

"Chinese" is not an ethnicity, you probably meant "Han Chinese" as the
ethnicity. Saying that Uyghurs "are not Chinese" is like saying Northern Irish
people "are not British". Of course this is going to piss people off, pro-
Chinese Uyghurs included. Indeed many of the Github comments are about
accusations to split China, and of course if you go into Northern Ireland and
talk about how all those people are "not British" you will understandably get
the same sort of accusation, that you are trying to split up a nation. Indeed
the pro-British Northern Irish call themselves the "unionists", the very word
the direct opposite meaning to "split".

The naming of the region as "autonomous" is also historical and unrelated to
the current surveillance and oppression (which is appalling) but to say this
in your second paragraph makes it sound like there is some conspiratorial
connection. The region in fact does have more legal autonomy than the other
provinces of China.

------
aembleton
Now the Notepad++ website seems to be down.
[https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/notepad-plus-
plus.org.html](https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/notepad-plus-plus.org.html)

~~~
bArray
Confirmed from NZ.

Now the question is, state or privately backed DDoS?

The third option is that they took it down themselves due to a different kind
of abuse, i.e. a report form or something.

~~~
creshal
CloudFlare is handling it now, so doesn't seem to be too severe.

------
bArray
Seems as though GitHub are now responding to this...

Just received a response from GitHub support (I removed their name):

> #### (GitHub Developer Support)

>

> Oct 30, 10:38 AM UTC

>

> Hello,

>

> Thanks for taking the time to let us know. Our team is currently

> investigating the account in question.

>

> Please let us know if we can help in any other way!

>

> Thanks,

> ####

------
gorbachev
Reporting the accounts to GitHub results in this:

"We've received too many requests from your IP address recently. Please wait a
few minutes, then try again."

~~~
Freak_NL
I get this after successfully reporting just one troll. The threshold seems to
be quite low for GitHub's abuse filters. Unfortunately, that means you can't
report a group of bad actors easily unless GitHub moderators with access to
the anti-abuse tools start reporting or banning them themselves.

------
rypskar
Good that they take a stand, more should dare to do that. I did see this as a
good enough reason to make a donation to Notepad++, and added the comment
"Supporting the Notepad++ v7.8.1: Free Uyghur release".

~~~
endymi0n
Here you go:

[https://notepad-plus-plus.org/donate/](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/donate/)

------
noirchen
I can read Chinese and it looks to me that both sides are attacking the other
side. And most are using simplified Chinese so they are all from the mainland.
I'm not surprised because just as Americans have heavily polarized opinions
towards Trump, Chinese people, especially the educated, also have a huge
divide in their political views. You don't see that in Chinese websites
because they know what not to say there, but on GitHub, a foreign website
without a high risk of being blocked, both sides just unleash hell on anyone
who they do not agree with.

~~~
kinow
Thanks! I thought all those comments were one sided. Interesting!

------
ryanlol
So is Github going to ban all of these accounts of chinese devs spreading
their nationalistic nonsense? I know they've handed out bans for much less in
the past.

Many of these accounts seem to be very active outside of the Notepad++ repo.

~~~
jeroenhd
I must say that I've only now realised that there is no "report abuse" button
on github.

Regardless of politics and Chinese propaganda, hurling insults at someone on
Github should be reason enough for action against their account. You can say
that the news media is lying and all that, that's just daily grind for most
English-themed media as well now, but yelling "fuck you" and "wishing a rotten
vagina" upon people is not something that should ever be tolerated.

~~~
gorbachev
There is. It's on the user profile page.

It really should be on each comment and issue the user has created.

~~~
jeroenhd
Ah, thank you. Reporting specific comments would make a lot more sense, but I
guess github isn't expecting people to use issue trackers as conversation
battlegrounds.

~~~
teraflop
You can report issues, pull requests, etc., but only if you have write
permissions to the repository.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-
communit...](https://help.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-
community/reporting-abuse-or-spam#reporting-an-issue-or-pull-request)

------
Neekerer
the site isn't blocked in China yet. Don't see proclamations like that often
here without a VPN.

------
staz
Related: [https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-
edition/](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-edition/)

~~~
Groxx
Site was relatively slow to load for me, so an archive.org mirror just in
case:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191030003924/https://notepad-p...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191030003924/https://notepad-
plus-plus.org/news/v781-free-uyghur-edition/)

Edit: wow, downvotes appeared pretty quickly. Hopefully this whole post
becomes training for detecting malicious behavior.

------
honest_tovarich
I made a remark about the author(s) of Notepad++ naming his release "Free
Uyghur", quite unpopular I would say, I meant it to be like that, I told
him/them that Uyghurs are just a ethnic group of China, not a nation, etc...
But in this case , bloating someone's project for political reason's is just
plain wrong, is awful. Github should have something in place to protect open
source projects against something like this.

~~~
Hamuko
_> Github should have something in place to protect open source projects
against something like this._

Github should have something in place to protect projects from their copyright
owners?

~~~
yorwba
"bloating someone's project" i. e. spamming. The person you're replying to
seems to have a nuanced view on the issue.

------
ivanb
I take this opportunity to remind us that Notepad++ used to have a backdoor.

~~~
Freak_NL
Please don't post such claims without a source to back them up. It's trolling.

Notepad++ (and many other Windows executables) was found vulnerable to loading
a hacked DLL dependency on a compromised Windows system. Notepad++ itself
contained no backdoor as far as I can tell.

This issue is explained here, as well as the actions taken to prevent it from
happening again:

[https://community.notepad-plus-
plus.org/topic/13415/v7-3-3-f...](https://community.notepad-plus-
plus.org/topic/13415/v7-3-3-fix-cia-hacking-notepad-issue)

~~~
ryanlol
>was found vulnerable

That is stretching the definition.

A privileged local attacker could (and can) modify Notepad++ and any other
software, that is not a vulnerability or issue of any kind.

------
betty60088
Haha..You need to go there and see for yourself if Uyghur or Tibetan people
are oppressed by the communist party instead of seeking news from western
media, which we all know are very much biased and anti China...no one likes to
be represented by a stranger from a foreign country who has no first hand
knowledge about the issue..

------
ArchieLeach
It's astounding how well insidious daily propaganda works.

I'm sure these guys mean well but they've been manipulated as much as the
'other side' has been.

Edit:

What news are reported and how they are reported in not random [1]. There has
very clearly been a campaign against China and this shows that it is working.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model)

~~~
Bootvis
Could you tell what "insidious daily propaganda" you have obeserved and how
about sides are equally manipulated?

~~~
DarkmSparks
This commentary by Jimmy Dore is a fairly good commentary on what it looks
like. [https://youtu.be/aT7WEkvCWeM](https://youtu.be/aT7WEkvCWeM)

