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Comment by westiseast | Hacker News Reader

In case HackerNews is wondering, this is what a 50 Cent Party member looks like.

Seriously.

The comments contain all the classic deflections of wumao posts: the endless whataboutisms, claims that China is peaceful, minimizing the situation in China, outright lies, a seemingly endless and authoritative knowledge of any situation in China you care to mention that always parrots the government line...

Everyone grows up learning a version of the Boy Who Cried Wolf stories. The moral is: when someone willfully engages in deception, it destroys their creditworthiness, even when they might be telling the truth later.

Maybe you aren't wumao. Fine - but the Chinese government has invested years and billions in utterly destroying the trustworthiness of your viewpoints by employing people who sound exactly, 100% like you. Sorry buddy, it undermines all of the possibly valid points you are making.

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Your comment is the worst thing I've seen on HN in a while, and the users who upvoted it should re-read the site guidelines and send themselves to bed without supper. If you want to destroy this community completely, you couldn't pick a much better device.

It should be obvious that smearing another user like this is a bannable offense here, regardless of how wrong you think they are. It poisons the discourse while purporting to defend it, for obviously political reasons of its own. That's unacceptable, even in a thread as thoroughly degraded as this one. Please don't do anything like this on HN.

If you look, you'll notice that I scolded the other user as well for abusing HN for pure politics. That is a bannable offense too. Instead of both sides breaking HN's rules and going at each other, I have a suggestion: neither of you do it.

I am sorely tempted to ban you both to set an example, but on principle we try to warn people first—it's hard to ask users to give each other the benefit of the doubt if we don't do it ourselves. But I can't say steam isn't coming out of my ears right now.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13202383 and marked it off-topic.

I'm cool with that to be honest.

I'd kinda suggest as mods that either (a) just outright stop/ban these kind of political and/or China focused posts, or (b) adopt hardcore moderation if and when they rear their heads.

I comment regularly on China related issues in other forums, and it's pretty boring watching any debate related to China get the same treatment by pro-China commenters. At least in my eyes, an 'ad hominem' attack or callout of 'wumao' style commenting like mine is part and parcel of pro-China commenters hijacking debates about China with endless comparisons to the US and blatant equivocism and falsehoods - i.e. I don't think you can allow one and not end up with the other. HN maintains high standards of debate and behaviour which perhaps aren't compatible with this kind of polarized debate.

All the best :)

Please don't accuse people of commenting in bad faith. It only poisons the well of discussion and breeds paranoia and suspicion, and political threads are too toxic around here as it is.

Attack the message, not the messenger.

Agreed. My point is kind of that China has been poisoning the well for years by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments. And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate :)

This guy is entitled to his opinions, but unfortunately the entire pro-China position is untrustworthy because of this (ref my previous comment).

>And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate :)

Because they do.

If you're wrong, you're doing their work for them by sowing discord and mistrust in the community. If you're right, you're doing their work for them by distracting from the subject and making the thread about the threat of the enemy within. The one thing you probably won't accomplish is getting them to stop.

The only way to win the game is not to play by their rules, and to not make it personal. If you really believe someone is a shill, report it to the admins, they claim to take this sort of thing seriously.

Please report this to the moderators (I looked but don't know how), as I would like to be vindicated.

There's a downvote brigade on my posts right now and anything I want to contribute gets detailed into accusations of my being some kind of agent.

> has been poisoning the well for years by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments.

What do you mean? Are you saying Chinese government paid people in US to do propaganda for the sake of Chinese leaders? I do not think that's any surprising. You should expect any country to do something to influence their competitors or enemies alike.

But you seem imply that the poster you accused was connected with Chinese government. You should not automatically link the government activity with personal behavior on HN. If there is an factual link between the poster's comments and government sponsorship, then go for it, expose the facts. The tactic of someone behaving pro-China, is certainly a "wu mao", is nothing better than claiming one is a traitor on the ground that he accused US govenment's any wrongdoing.

Could you elaborate?

Sure. Sorry for length of this then...

In my head at least, I'm not accusing this guy specifically of being a paid commenter or operative or agent. I have no evidence of that. I feel like its actually irrelevant whether he's paid or genuine.

I'm saying that the content of his comments, the tone of the answers and the rhetorical techniques are basically the same as those seen in hundreds of threads about China where genuine discussion gets derailed by pro-CCP commenters. IMO, genuine discussion about China is difficult/impossible unless there's a recognition and backlash against the poor quality of pro-CCP comments. Eg:

He brings up the USA immediately and repeatedly on a post about China (whataboutism). The underlying message is consistently 'the USA is worse. The USA is the same. If the USA does it, why are you attacking China instead of looking after your own problems?'

He immediately claims the original article is blatant propaganda rather than discussing it earnestly. Similarly, he claims everyone else is living in a media bubble and their sources are not trustworthy (Economist, NYT, 'western media'). He doesn't really mention any news sources of his own that might indicate his own 'media bubble'.

He writes fairly frequent outright lies ("[China] are in and have not been in wars, are leaders of the UN peacekeeping forces, and do not militarily interfere in other countries' affairs") which can be fairly easily destroyed if you can use Google.

To my eyes, a thread about China has pretty quickly become a quagmire of multiple complex and subjective situations related to China, where mud and suspicion is being thrown on everyone, and any opinion anyone projects that might be anti-China is cast as subjective, biased, unresearched etc.

Generally speaking, anywhere you go on the internet where people discuss China-related issues publicly end up like this. Same goes for a lot of Russia related issues discussed in English. I'm sure if you are reading the Arabic internet and bump into issues that the US paid-commenting/auto-commenting systems are interested in, it's the same thing. It's a specific goal of government-sponsored commenting campaigns that you don't try to win arguments; you just muddy the waters, make everyone sound unreliable, destroy reasonable debate.

It's a sticky situation. To my mind, the comments that user posted were immediate red flags. I don't think a single one of his comments added to the substantive debate about the original article. Mine didn't either; it was a stupid response to the poor quality of his comments. Oh well...

> In case HackerNews is wondering, this is what a 50 Cent Party member looks like.

> Seriously.

I actually just checked out this person's post history. It's all politics. Mostly about the US waning and China rising (until 600-ish days back at least, before then it was more about TTP/NSA/SONY/etc.), but the person seems extremely well versed about all of this stuff, mentioning a few things I had not heard of before (and I'm more informed than most peers while doing a cyber security study).

Either this account is a government account neck-deep, or he's totally legit and should write a blog that makes it to the front page every week. I'm not 100% sure.

A few things make me inclined to believe he's for real and not a Chinese government official.

1. He made a mistake a while ago where he responded to someone, asking why they said something to him, while they had responded to another account. I find it far fetched to assume this is reverse psychology.

2. The other account is named very similarly. No government trying to establish trusted profiles would do that. Unless it's reverse psychology there too, but that makes little sense (easy to find similarly named profiles and hold them against the light than distinct ones).

3. I managed to find a post where he actually promotes a decentralized system. I forgot what it was and closed the tab (stupid me) but it was something neither the US nor Chinese government would want for a surveillance state. This could be a calculated post to keep the profile up, hoping the post will add enough credibility to allow posting more propaganda, thus allowing for more people to read what he wants them to read... but it seems far fetched.

4. The other account posts along similar lines. Not a different persona. Why switch profiles when you are trying to establish one? He doesn't even post with the old one anymore. A person's reason would be privacy; a government official's reason... I don't know.

Added up together, I think this person is worth listening to. He knows a lot, seems to think about this a great deal, and actually seems pro-US even if it doesn't sound like it most of the time.

As for myself, what can I say? I'm not even claiming to be from the US. But the points I mentioned you can easily verify if you actually cared. It only involves clicking the profile, comments, and "more" links.

(I say he but it could also be she. Using "they" when referring to a single person is still a bit odd to me.)

Thank you, it's interesting to hear what my account history looks like.

Please also check xnull, xnull3guest, xnull4guest, etc.

I have another account jwtadvice.

These are all on different computers. I was lazy and created different credentials for all of them.

If you have questions, whatever, let me know.

I understand why people are afraid that other commentators may be intelligence agents. I too suffer from this thought. The truth of the matter is that governments around the world participate in social media propaganda (US, Russia, and China included, don't kid yourself).

Regarding "pro-China" accusations. I'm pro-American. I love American values. And that's why I will criticize America when it does not live up to them.

I am one person. I am an advocate for decentralized systems, including in Russia and in China.

I've given advice to people on HN in these various accounts about where I get information. If you feel that I am well educated, I recommend finding one of those comments and looking into those sources. They include all open source information channels - and many of them are US official outlets (such as State Department press briefings).

Anyway...

> that's why I will criticize America when it does not live up to them

That's what I figured ;)

It's also sort of easy to tell when he uses terms like "Western media" -> I almost never refer to the media, or myself as "Western". I'm just me.

Only someone who wants to promote an "Us = Chinese vs. Them = Western" viewpoint would use this term. Don't the Russians also use terms like this?

Is there a term I should be using instead when I'm talking about international media coming from Western countries? I use the term Russian media and Chinese media, though I don't talk about them as much (I don't read them as often, though I try).

I'm an American. I grew up in the New England area and I now live on the West Coast. I'm in Computer Security.

I do not know how to address a challenge like this?

How can I - without providing something absurd like my driver's license - prove that I am an American and of American decent?

Note that I was talking the other day about the situation in Cyprus, where I used the terminology 'aggressive' to describe Turkish behavior. I was accused of being a Greek.

Anyway, I fully reject the accusation that I am 50 Cent Party member or paid by any government, including my home country the United States.

Sure, but refer to my last point.

Don't appeal to us. The problem is not whether we have or have not evidence of who you are. The problem is that the Chinese government has actively destroyed its long term credibility on these issues by (a) using wumao and schills to attempt to DDOS public debate on these issues, (b) locking up and disempowering any voices of dissent that might allow a nuanced, authentic discussion of China-related issues in or outside of China, c) taking zero tolerance, blinkered and extreme views on many national/territorial issues that are very difficult for anyone else not Chinese to accept.

E.g. I would totally support the idea of One China eventually, but why does the mainland government insist on denying that Taiwan is, de facto, a separate country right now? It's insane. Few would begrudge a future, managed and gradual reunion of these historically linked countries. But why on earth won't China (and pro-China commenters like yourself) drop the charade that Taiwan doesn't have its own constitution, currency, diplomatic service, politics, borders etc.? That's why your opinions can't be trusted - because they 100% mirror the insane opinions of the CCP and the wumao they employ.

You might be a totally cool guy who just happens to believe that China is peace loving and coincidentally has done loads of detailed research into UNCLOS and the state of civil society and dissent in China.

But the issue has moved on.

I see. It appears you've decided your opinion long ago.

Please don't appeal to me as the rest of this comment is not to you.

I'd like to address the HN community. Note the above authoritative assurance this commentor is giving, with one sided accusation of the Chinese and a complete pass on US aggression and social media propaganda. This is exactly the kind of playbook used by those operating out of the US military propaganda center Fort Bragg.

He might be just a HN commentor who is nationalistic and affected by the propaganda of his media bubble who coincidentally is charging people who dissent from those opinions as being foreign propagandists. He could.

But either way, this conversation has moved on.

;)

What a horrible place the internet has become...

haha nice try :)

Again, totally cool, but straight out of the wumao playbook. Post of last resort is call everyone and everything into question, accuse the other commenter of his own national bias and bubble (whilst refusing to accept yours), throw your hands up and play the victim.

> the wumao playbook.

Is there a summary of "wumao" playbook? I think all these you mentioned are standard propaganda or public communication tricks.

> call everyone and everything into question

Sorry, I did not see evidences that the poster accused "everyone and everything". I doubt HN tolerates such behavior at all.

How about references the parent comment about the specific statements that reflect your statement?

> accuse the other commented of his own national bias and bubble (whilst refusing to accept yours)

I think you should emphasize the the part "whilst refusing to accept yours". This is definitely many so-called "wumao" have to do to do their jobs.

I surely see HN members have far less exhibition of this trait.

> throw your hands up and play the victim.

I did not see the poster "play the victim". Even the accusation on China is a lie, that does not victimize any members here. The whole idea of someone "play the victim" should be seen as a way of thinking that does not fit here.

Some comments can hurts someone's feeling, but it should be clear that we discuss topic, not accusing people. We back our statements with facts, and dispute others with facts too.

You're the one providing "authoritative assurance" and it's very transparent (obvious) to me. Especially in a thread about the very thing you're mimicking.

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