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.
Every thread that paints China in a negative light on HN always follow the same pattern:
- USA whataboutism
- Mass flagging (resulting in the story getting knocked off the frontpage despite having a great upvote, comment and submission ratio)
- Comments negative towards China receive 1-5 quick downvotes before slowly climbing back to normal again
It’s really unfortunate that an otherwise well moderated community is so easily defeated by this abuse, and that there appear to be nothing being done to fix it despite many obvious and simple solutions (ignore flags and downvotes by those who abuse them, ban shills that resort to whataboutism from posting in threads containing /China/Chinese keywords).
It's not remotely close to true that negative comments about China are "the way to get downvoted on HN". On the contrary, HN's demographic, while quite international, is almost all Western, and for better or worse it follows geopolitical trends and the leads set by government and media.
When we have to ask commenters not to take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, it's usually because of generic nationalistic rhetoric against China. This happens often enough that we routinely get accused of being pro-Chinese. We're not, of course. We're against nationalistic flamewar, regardless of who is flaming or being flamed, because it's against HN's rules and destructive of the spirit of this site.
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.
Yeah, it's pretty common that anything that remotely questions China's rise inevitably gets downvoted on HN. Funny how a supposed powerful and up and coming nation has to constantly silence its critics (just look at HK or early Covid journalist). Its almost as if the myth of China's supposed success is just that, a myth.
at the same time, every article remotely critical of China in HN always has a squadron of comments employing whataboutism and deflection and unsubstantiated accusations of anti-China propaganda.
Please, HN is intellectual paradise compared to reddit. I once tried to get into a debate on reddit about whether China was the next rising superpower or not. I pointed out China's demographic issues, how the developed world has largely turned against them in sentiment, how they're dependent on the outside world for food and energy, etc.
The response I got? "Lol people have been saying China's going to collapse for decades and it hasn't happened yet lol" Oh and I got downvoted while that response got up-voted. I basically became a full time lurker in reddit after that experience. Complete waste of 15 minutes typing out an actual argument.
Contrast that to HN where even when people have a misinformed argument they at least make an effort to engage, and I've actually been put in my place a few times with new information/well reasoned arguments that weren't just pulled out of someone's ass.
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 can't recall seeing downvoted comments on HN that were defending China while making good points, with sound logic, avoiding whataboutism and crazy comparisons, and being respectful. The problem is that almost every pro-Chinese-policy comment that I've seen here violates one or more of those things.
In the specific case of the GP post, they're making a bad analogy in their first paragraph.
HN has a very strong USA (and in particular silicon valley) bias but I take offense at your generalization. I don't recall ever seeing a thread where the comments were unilateral china-bashing.
There are several verboten topics on HN. I hadn't noticed China among them but there are several sacred cows here which, when criticized, will get you a swift burial by downvoting. At least in those cases, it's definitely intentional and related to the subject person or industry, regardless of the truth of the post itself.
Contrarianism runs rampant on HN and is easily weaponized by bad actors.
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