With both the whatabowtists and the anti-China hawks trying to outplay each other in the moral outrage game.
There are plenty of subreddits for those who like to astroturf about China ranging from anti-China hawks to pro-Beijing trolls.
Sorry for the cynicism, but I really dislike astroturfers.
I've seen a couple of userames popping on these threads all the time. And China related threads have an odd number of new accounts posting comments in them.
It can be people that have to live anonymously lest they have to deal with dictatorships or it can also be the same group of people posting the same opinions all over again.
As for names, there is two users in this thread that are posting in almost every China-related thread for at least a month or so. I won't particularly point to them, since I'm not sure it goes well with the guidelines
Though it didn't happen on HN, the unidan case on reddit is a good example. The guy basically manipulated voting in a large subreddit on his own by using a number of alternative accounts to upvote his own comments.
Anyway, if that is the direction HN is headed and this is regarded as acceptable, then I'm leaving.
I don't tolerate propaganda or people spreading it. This is on the guidelines: "Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle." A bunch of users forget about that and I won't be around a website that goes into it.
We have an actual word for this: grassroots.
Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data.