It's an unpopular opinion on HN because holding China accountable would threaten their bottom line. IBM was happy to sell Nazi Germany punch card tabulators and alphabetized even after the opening of the camps. China could burn Taiwan to the ground tomorrow and 3/4 of HN would still downvote anyone who suggests there might be more important things than making as much money as you possibly can.
Careful there. You’re about to be called a shill, and downvoted, or labeled an apologist, for writing anything positive or supportive, about China’s handling of the crisis. It appears HN has become just the same as the braindead Reddit crowd, since most people visit both sites.
I think it's fair to acknowledge there is a non-trivial amount of users from China on HN, with their own agenda. Just as I am American, and pro-America, I am sure they are pro-China.
With that said, China has a history of bad behavior, especially with regards to cyber-warfare against US companies.
Because HN, in general, hates China with a passion. Please self-censor and refrain from saying anything positive about China in the future or you will be down-voted to oblivion.
HN has a large Chinese user-base who will be quick to downvote and flag threads and comments critical of China. That's also why this thread has been knocked off the frontpage despite having 155 points and being only 3 hours old.
What bothers me about HN is how people here are afraid to criticize the Chinese government and their authoritarian regime. We should be fearlessly talking about it. What happens here is the “softening” of opinions either by A) Comparing with America B) Somehow justifying authoritarian governments by observing success and economic progress in Shanghai/Shenzhen.
I feel that Googlers inside of Google has the same type of environment but with combined strong business justification to oppose project DragonFly.
HN is one of the most intellectual communities in the internet, I love reading comments just about anything here. Except for this topic - I despise HN in this regard.
In the past, I was told by moderators to not post any inciting comments that are about China because it ends up being USA vs China. What a shame...While I agree that the conversation becomes toxic, what’s the point of a community where I cannot freely express criticism of a government that takes a lot of risk by real journalists to put stories like this in front of the world.
I didn't want to say that, but for a long time I already have a feeling that there are users here in the HN community whose sole purpose is to deny any kind of criticism against China or putting it in a bad light. Almost like paid trolls, I would say. I expect lots of this kind of comments in this thread too.
Expected. Threads like these turn into a wasteland of downvotes for a reason.
China is a superpower. Superpowers have units dedicated to information warfare. Some of these units deal with controlling discourse and sentiment. HN is a fairly prominent public forum within the tech industry. China wants global influence, particular in the technology sector.
It's reasonable to assume they probably have some fairly clever downvote rings here that are well hidden.
I've noticed that folks even hinting at the fact that China could be doing something unethical in a given situation will often get quickly downvoted on HN.
HN is flooded with Chinese shills these days and I'm constantly seeing pro-China comments. Unfortunately it's such a large country so unless dang (who has been especially disappoint in this regard) is willing to put a stop to this state of affairs the downvote numbers will always be rigged.
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