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Comment by ribosometronome | Hacker News Reader

There is a diff between not being a troll and being respectful of alleged human rights abuses. Suggesting that we must be respectful in the light of massive human rights violations is how those human rights violations get to take place. This is the same sort of peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset that led to things like apologizing for not sourcing parts from forced labor in China and sites like reddit holding on to jailbait, involuntary porn/voyeur, and literal hate subreddits out of fear of taking any stance.

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I'm saying you have to be respectful of this community and its rules if you want to participate here. That's reasonable: you're getting something, so it's fair for you to give something in return. The HN guidelines explain clearly what you need to give.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Angry internet noun phrases like "peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset" are a distraction from this, not to mention (god help us) porn/voyeur. All we're trying to do is have an internet forum that doesn't suck. IMO that's a goal that benefits everybody here, and everybody here should do their part.

Users hurling nationalistic insults and ideological talking points at each other goes in exactly the wrong direction for that. This shouldn't be hard to see. It also, by the way, does nothing to help vulnerable human beings, and invoking something noble like that to excuse garden-variety internet mudslinging is a smidge distasteful.

I'm not particularly educated on internet conflict except PG's disagreement hierarchy, and personal experience in hacking social expectations on Reddit (e.g., call it the "inoculation" instead of "vax" or "vaccine" to avoid tipping your political hand).

Is there any "best practices" on handling a sticky situation across an insanely diverse absurdly large crowd of individuals in a low-context communication channel? I believe this would be a #1 go-to for absolutely any social network, and I imagine there are a dozen people reading this who are looking for precisely that.

I think the intention is more to try an avoid every comment just being "China bad, F*ck Intel"

We all know there are human rights abuses in China, but no amount of emotional comments on an HN thread is gonna fix that. It would be more productive to have some sort of more thought provoking conversations.

And on the theme of discussion, isn't reddit very moderated? I think 6% of all posts where removed last year (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56099232)

The maximum effect a comment on here can have is making a statement that changes someone's mind. Overly emotional, shallow, or terse responses aren't going to have that effect.

I get your point, but disregard for decorum here isn't going to solve any of those problems. At best it's shouting into a void, at worst your fooling yourself into thinking you're part of the solution while fixing nothing.

I think he meant to not devolve to into calling everyone a tankie bot or genocide denier if I were to ask you what non-editorial non NED or weapons manufacturer funded primary data you're referring to when you talk about "massive human rights violations".

So should we start criticizing every american company, person and entity in every thread concerning anything american since US government kills innocent civilians on an even bigger scale than Chinese government? Because you know that is exactly happening.

If the US currently commits anything close to what's happening in Xinjiang, particularly with the emphasis on it being on a helpless minority of its own citizens, you would have to link to it. Many of us don't think that is happening.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/WarDeathTol...

It’s pure atrocity…

Also about the US minority ( I wasn’t writing about that in my earlier comment but since you brought that up)

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z

So stop denying that systemic racism, racial profiling of minorities and targeted police brutality is not happening in the US. Did you vote for Trump? Because that would explain why you think those things don’t exist.

Nobody is saying that other countries haven't done horrible things. That's a separate issue, unless your argument is that it is okay for the CCP (not the Chinese people, this is political, not racial) to commit crimes against humanity. The response to the possible horrors in Xinjiang, and Tibet, should not be countered with whataboutisms. Don't we all want everyone to have a quality life free of suffering and abuse by others?

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