
Ask HN: Why is HN predominated by pro-ChineseCommunistParty people? - quotz
Whenever I comment anything that is anti-CCP I get downvoted like crazy. Why have we forgotten what liberty is?
======
ArchieLeach
I've had a quick look at your comments, including in this thread, and I think
this is because you post inflammatory, unsubstantive comments.

Try to post substantive comments on what you disagree with about China and the
CCP, show that you know a minimum the issues at hand, rather than "have we
forgotten what liberty is" or "how to defeat the communists"...

~~~
quotz
Hey thanks for your reply. Why dont you post from your main account? It seems
like youre hiding your views from the public?

Also, I think theres substantive evidence everywhere online except in the
great firewall of china that can be used to conclude that dictatorship and
communism is bad. Am I really debating this right now?

~~~
yorwba
The problem with your comments is not that there's no evidence to support your
viewpoint, but that you're not telling anyone anything new. You're just
telling everyone how angry you are. This site is for intellectual curiosity
first and foremost, if it turns into an ideological battleground then only
because we're not good at strictly following rules.

I'm not perfect either, but my recent comment history may give you an idea of
what I mean by "telling others something new."

------
sawaruna
Reading comments of random topics (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190265))
most comments seem to not be siding with China. The HN community certainly
isn't pro-CCP, but there are probably just random weibo drones browsing and
downvoting anything they disagree with.

~~~
quotz
I am getting spam downvoting on like a lot of antiCCP comments. Shouldnt HN
deploy that feature that some platforms have where you cant mass-downvote one
users comments?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I think they already do have measures to prevent mass downvoting, flagging,
vote rings etc. Dang would know more.

Downvotes might be because your trope one liner put downs aren't adding much.
"I thought the western world was immune to communism", "This place is dear to
me and now theyre destroying it", what because we're exposed to views
different to ours? Which "they"? Who is to say whatever downvotes you've
caught aren't entirely from Western pro-capitalists?

As someone not of Asian heritage who has been active in Hong Kong related
threads, has friends there, and supports the demonstrators, I can say to my
eyes, it is _not_ predominated by pro CCP people. I've certainly had a
discussion or two, disagreements, a different view of how history played out -
they get their spin from media, we get ours. There's a few people with a
distinct perspective. It's always useful to hear the opposing view, or
evidence you're mistaken, even if you never reach agreement.

------
dang
We've looked into this at length on many occasions. There's no evidence I know
of that Chinese agents are manipulating HN.

What's happening is that HN is a large community whose members come from many
different backgrounds. Among those are quite a few users of Chinese descent
who either grew up in Western countries or went there to study or work; and
also many Westerners who have gone to China to work or for other reasons. As
you might expect, these users have a perspective on China and Chinese-Western
relations that is quite different from the majority population on HN which,
though highly international, is well over 90% Western and whose views
naturally reflect the majority views in their countries. This is what happens
when people come from different backgrounds and have different
experiences—they end up with different perspectives on things. I know that
sounds like a platitude, but it's a platitude with consequences.

Many stories relating to the current upheaval in Chinese-Western relations
have appeared on Hacker News in the last year, including several intense
threads within the last few days. The majority perspective here reflects the
Western demographics of the community, but the smaller group I've just
mentioned, the users with different backgrounds and experiences in relation to
China, is also participating in these threads. When they do, a grinding
collision of icebergs occurs, as differing perspectives bump up against each
other.

When people run into a view that is a little different from their own—say one
standard deviation away or less—they tend to respond conversationally.
Unfortunately, when they run into a view that is a lot different from their
own, the standard reaction is to become hostile. Instead of curiosity and
openness, people become suspicious and feel that the other person can't be
speaking in good faith. They don't think "wow, that's a really different point
of view". They think "astroturfer", "shill", "spy", "bot", "troll", and
"communist agent". That's what we're seeing on HN these days.

Is it ok for commenters to hurl these accusations against other commenters
they disagree with? No it is not. Doing so gratuitously, as a way to expunge
discomfort or irritation at what someone else said, is poisonous to HN in many
ways: it damages community, banishes tolerance, is uncurious and off topic. It
also has a boy-who-cried-wolf or field-of-boliauns effect of making real abuse
harder to track down.

Worse, when people single out others as targets of these accusations, we end
up with ugly mob behavior, with individuals being falsely accused and even
being run out of town (examples:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358)).
None of us in our right mind wants that here.

The way to mitigate this is to have a simple rule of looking for evidence when
concerns about abuse come up. If people have concerns about abuse, the site
guidelines ask them to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look for such
evidence. In the absence of evidence, insinuations about astroturfing, etc.,
are off topic, for the reasons I described.

This problem has a lot of complex dynamics that are not what they seem. For
example, because the threads about China and Chinese-Western relations have
become so intense and flamewar-prone, the users with minority perspectives who
I described are often prompted to create accounts and jump into the threads
when they have a strong reaction against something that was posted. Making a
new account when you're hot under the collar isn't a great way to participate
on HN, but it's not in bad faith either—quite the contrary. However, when such
green accounts show up in these threads, espousing contrarian views in
already-irritated ways, the majority view-holders interpret this as an assault
of astroturfers and paid CCP agents. After all, they are green accounts making
pro-China comments—nothing could be more obvious! Actually, nothing could be
more wrong. What you're most likely getting is (for example, let's say) a
Chinese-Canadian Amazon or Microsoft employee, who's been reading HN for years
and is suddenly hurt and dismayed by all the aggressive anti-Chinese comments
that have been showing up on the site—or (let's say) a Chinese grad student
who stayed in the US, got a good job and played by the rules, and back home in
China is the one holding the other side of the argument, defending the US and
his American friends to his family who have been hearing nasty things about
them over there. Or it's (let's say) a Brit who went to China to do business,
ended up forging personal connections there, learned lots of things that
people in the West don't know, and is appalled by how ignorant the comments
that are informed only by media sources can be.

Based on all the investigation I've done about this, that's mostly the human
side behind those accounts. Of course there are always exceptions—one user,
for example, has recently decided to become a serial troll and post virulent
anti-Chinese comments (or are they anti-American? I forget), to wreak havoc on
the commenters whose emotions are already running high. Ironically they seem
to have been set off by a perception of horrendous HN bias against their own
position on the topic, and that is how they've chosen to react. Another
outlier case was
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444),
when an influx of new Chinese commenters showed up because a link to an HN
thread was circulating on the Chinese equivalent of Quora.

But those cases are rare. From everything we've seen, the vast majority of
comments on this topic are being posted in good faith. The tragedy is that so
few users have a large-enough frame to be willing to believe that, and to hear
conflicting information without going quickly into inflammation.

~~~
jstewartmobile
I wouldn't be so sure of that. State actors do an OK job of keeping their
prints off of things.

What bugs me are silent downvotes. If someone disagrees, great! Tell me why.

Being quietly zapped into invisibility just feels like cowardly thought-
policing.

~~~
dang
> State actors do an OK job of keeping their prints off of things

No doubt they do. What are our options? We can fantasize about this and
project our fantasies onto other users—or we can look for some sort of
evidence, any evidence, before making claims. If you want to believe in
diabolical state actors manipulating the community and leaving no trace
whatsoever, how could that ever be falsified? The only thing you have to go by
in that case are your own assumptions and preconceptions.

On HN, we choose the other fork of that branch and look for evidence. I'm not
saying the bar is high, but there needs to be _something_. In the absence of
any evidence at all, the HN guidelines ask users not to post insinuations
about astroturfing, foreign spies, etc. Someone else holding an opposing view
does not count as evidence. There is an epidemic of internet madness about
this right now, and it's not in the values of this site to succumb. Perhaps
everywhere else wants to be James Jesus Angleton in the wilderness of mirrors,
but HN, barring catastrophic failure, is not going to go there.

As for silent downvotes, I realize they sting and are annoying, but that's the
way HN works. Users aren't required to explain why they downvote. If we had
such a requirement, the threads would fill up with 10x the petty bickering
about downvotes, and we have more than enough of that already. The thing to do
with downvotes is to examine what you wrote to see what might have been
objectionable about it. If you notice something, note the correction for next
time. If you notice nothing, muse to yourself about the fickleness of homo
internetus and move on. It's not worth posting about, which is why the HN
guidelines ask you not to.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
jstewartmobile
" _the only thing you have to go by in that case are your own assumptions and
preconceptions_ "

 _dang_ , you are not the only dude here who went to college.

In my own case, all I can say is that I have " _seen some shit_ ", and I would
not feel totally comfortable or assured that this was all purely the result of
personal, unpaid, opinions.

~~~
dang
Educational credentials weren't on my mind. The point is this: if you have
evidence, let's hear about it. If you don't, then please follow the site
guidelines and refrain from making insinuations about astroturfers, shills, or
spies. Someone else having an opposing view does not count as evidence.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
db48x
They pay people to do that.

~~~
quotz
Yeah, but even HN? This place is dear to me and now theyre destroying it. Its
like they found my secret treehouse...

~~~
r721
HN is actually quite popular website - SimilarWeb's estimate is 12.6 million
visits a month:

[https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.ycombinator.com#over...](https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.ycombinator.com#overview)

~~~
dang
It's more like 150M visits a month.

Edit: 147M in September.

Edit 2: I'm talking about page views, plus ajax requests like collapsing
subthreads. If by 'visits' you mean user sessions, that number would obviously
be lower.

~~~
r721
Thanks! I heard their estimates can be wildly inaccurate, but I didn't think
that can mean wrong by order of magnitude...

------
quotz
Now its even flagged. I simply asked a question that would probably be on the
mind of a lot of users on here that value their privacy, liberty and human
rights.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
FYI, I flagged it as the question was "Why is HN predominated by...". That's
presumption without evidence. Who says it is? A couple of downvotes?

I just answered a different comment with why I don't think your claim is
anything near true.

