It is truly remarkable how many replies in that thread consist of bad analogies, denials of clear third party reporting, and whatabout-ism.

Same thing happens here btw on HN. Since I just said something against HN, I guarantee this comment will get downvoted into oblivion.

yeah i commented about documenting the prc supporters enabling this to happen and I got downvoted and flagged!

It's bad that certain groups (especially that one) will downvote/flag HN comments for political reasons, but I dare say the reason your comment got flagged was because of its emotional/aggressive tone, e.g. "so that each and every one of them can be prosecuted after China loses the third world war".

if we're not allowed to be emotional about genocide, then I'm not sure we are allowed to be human at all.

No one could disagree. My inane comment was just a distraction from the topic, sorry. I really only wanted to say that a sober suggestion could convince more people than a crudely aggressive one. Try again?

Which part did you find aggressive? Prosecuting those responsible for aiding in the genocide of a people?

World war? Indiscriminate ire at Baidu execs?

The horrible reality of humanity is that people follow orders they shouldn't, because you don't want to be the only person to say no, achieving nothing. It goes even further in the Stanford prison experiment. That's why autocratic regimes like Belarus's persist long after everyone knows they have no legitimacy.

Also, (Re: "PRC supporters and enablers") I assume the vast majority of the people working in the Chinese government are decent people and have never had to do anything immoral.

Well then the horrible reality of humanity is that we seek to punish people who play a part in these atrocities in order to seek justice, till we can come up with a better alternative. Otherwise, let's not punish some newbie in a gang who was forced to murder as part of his forced initiation even though he didn't want to.

generally downvoting happens when you talk about voting in the meta, which is against the rules and spirit.

I can't talk about why I might have downvoted your comment.

The karma cycle of life. Humourless slashdot 4 eva.

The exact same thing? There's no meaningful difference?

> It is truly remarkable how many replies in that thread consist of bad analogies, denials of clear third party reporting, and whatabout-ism.

Those are the the typical tactics, and they're pretty bad at it, but it must be noted that there are several long-standing wumao accounts on here that will brigade on posts that are deemed to be anti-CCP. The jokes on them, as I couldn't possibly care less about fake internet points, but every time I talk about HK and the CCP its not long before I get into the negatives if the thread/post has high visibility.

I find my posts will dip into the negative territory while the thread is young then slowly creep back up as it ages. Pros know that only the most recent content matters.

Do you deny that the DRP gov't is directly or indirectly paying many thousands of people to wage a vast information war on social media?

That is correct, but the current HN guidelines state that if you suspect voting-rings or other manipulation, contact the mods out-of-band and they'll attend to it. Commenting about it and accusing people of shilling solely based on their opposition to your point of view degrades the conversation every single time. The mods have more data points to correlate and can remediate if necessary.

> Do you deny that the DRP gov't is directly or indirectly paying many thousands of people to wage a vast information war on social media?

First of all, I'm assuming by "DRP" you mean the PRC. Is DRP a non-English acronym?

The PRC definitely employs online shills, but my understanding is that they're mostly active on the Chinese language internet.

I think the people we encounter on the English internet who seem like shills actually have more in common with GamerGate than the actual government-employed 50 cent party. They even go on hamfisted GamerGate-like harassment campaigns against people they don't like.

That is why USA or the west world is losing if we believed social media has a key role in shaping opinion. You cannot go it and they can come out. And even chinese coming out with their wechat would be closed.

I am not hopeful. Whilst I believe the ccp might go, it is that asymmetric thing which is a problem.