It's not just a civility burden, it's a factual burden.
If somebody came onto HN posting obviously dumb stuff about how American people feel and think, they'd be downvoted, because everyone can see the obvious falsehood.
But when it's Chinese, majority vote of Americans decides the truth! They will tell you the real deal on how things work inside China. And if someone calls them morons, we have you to come in and keep things civil.
I'm not sure what your point is. Obviously majority vote does not decide the truth, and ignorant people don't know what they're talking about. And still we have to try to find a way to operate this forum and not allow people to destroy it. Burning the community down doesn't serve the truth in any way.
Nice talk, but you are one of the biggest offenders by using moderation powers to curtail discussion around topics which may not fit the majority world-view while refusing to treat the view of ignorant morons similarly. I have seen it happen several times over the last decade. And no, I am not going to present any "evidence" here.
I'll match your evidence-free comment with one of my own: you have no idea how hard we work to do just what I described above, and how much pressure we come under because of it.
Re what you've "seen happen several times over the last decade": I'm sure you've seen some dots, but how you connect them into the picture you've got is not a thing you've seen, but something you yourself have made out of the dots. If you started with different priors, you'd collect different dots and build a totally different picture—and believe me, people do.
Your (and others') dot collections are smatterings of datapoints out of which, like magic beans, you can grow whatever beanstalk of bias you want. People with different priors have different tastes in datapoints and "ignorant morons", therefore collect different beans, and therefore grow different visions of massive, outrageous bias—and they're all just as angry about it.
I'll believe it when I see "anti-China" posts being removed from the first 3-4 pages with as much enthusiasm as much as "anti-US" posts. Or when flags are removed from posts related to death of Kobe Bryant (or conversely, discussion about the death of a nobody like Bill Gates' father demoted by moderation action).
Look at this immediate thread above your comment, majority vote did decide the truth about how Chinese people think (they're brainwashed!). Then you scolded someone who got salty about it.
If you want to have some actual influence over how we handle these situations, I need you to engage with the detailed explanation I gave above. If you think you know a better way to handle it, I'd like to hear how, but if you don't even try to respond to the argument (and worse, if you just post glib dismissals), that comes across as blaming us for a difficult situation that we actually work hard as hard as we can to try to mitigate. This is not helpful.
You'd probably like to ban the topic entirely, but it'd be weird to have one banned topic and you've said that doesn't work, so that's out.
So what's left, being even-handed, I guess. Except it's a 10-1 ratio, so being even-handed, ban people from both sides leaves you with a 9-0 ratio.. congrats? Even if you're really, really, really trying to be even-handed with regards to content, most people would bias towards handing out 50-50 to feel fair, while 10-1 (or whatever ratio) is actually statistically fair. But that would feel quite biased if you did it! Practically taking a side! So we get a phenomenon where a bad Chinese-adjacent comment (or even a polite one) is super likely to be moderated, but you can't possibly moderate all of the really bad anti-China comments in this thread, there's too many, they rule the day and they establish truth for passersby.
Tech is one of the few industries with a large Chinese minority during this time of rising tension. It would vastly improve the intellectual tone of the site if we had more of them explaining their viewpoint and less of people telling them they're brainwashed.
Failing that, I think the actual real-world answer is to pro-actively push down the repetitive anti-China stories that hit the front page multiple times a week, and then just deny it if anyone asks. They're not intellectually interesting, they're hostile to a significant tech minority, and you don't like the flamewar. Why keep them?
I wouldn't like to ban the topic. I would like people to treat each other respectfully.
I agree with you that it would be better for HN if Chinese users, and users of Chinese background, could share more of their experiences and observations. I've been arguing that for a long time, as I believe you know. But it's not super cool of you to be making that argument as long as your own contributions to HN are undermining that possibility. We're each responsible for how we individually affect the collective situation, and pointing the finger at others—even if they're behaving badly, and even though they're benefitting from an unfair, lopsided fight—is not helpful.
HN will continue to trend towards having 2-5 content-free "china bad amirite" threads a week with an echo chamber of people who don't know any history of the region saying completely nonsensical things. People who know a little more, or who point out things like "the belt and road initiative isn't a literal road and can't be used to invade someone" will be banned for contributing to flamewar.
For example, in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29655341[1]. You can't be everywhere, there will always 10x comments like that for every 'bad' comment going the other way, and your even-handedness means that 9/10 of them are implicitly judged as fine, acceptable and encouraging intellectual something-or-other.
[1] Check that guy's history, he writes Xi Jinping as Hsi Chunping.. his commitment to ideology is so strong that he wade-giles'd Xi, lol
I've been trying to persuade baybal2 for years to stop breaking the site guidelines, and have banned and unbanned him over the years, but you're quite wrong in your assumptions—he has a lot of experience in the region and knows a lot. Not only that but people have attacked him unfairly in the past here too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898). I also don't believe that he's primarily an ideologue—his comments (at least many of them) are more interesting than that. Whether he was using an obsolete transliteration as flamebait or not is beyond my ability to say, but he's not a native English speaker, so maybe there are some crossed signals here too.
This is a good example of how people jump to conclusions and assume the worst about each other. It's no more ok when you do that than when other users do it, even if you are (or feel you are) part of a minority that gets treated unfairly.
I understand and empathize about how frustrating this is—but lashing out at the very people who are bending over backwards to try to bring some semblance of tolerance and neutrality to an impossible situation is neither nice nor helpful.
I've discussed the lopsided dynamic of these conversations with you many times. The question is how to deal with it. No matter how frustrating it is, it's important not to respond to ignorance by losing your cool, becoming abusive, and so on. When you do that, you're reinforcing the very situation you deplore, and by that you actually make yourself responsible for the status quo. Each of us has a small quantum of energy to contribute, and it's important not to use yours to cause further harm (even when it's for deep reasons).
It's much better to respond to ignorance patiently and with good information, seeking points of connection and opportunities to treat the other person better than they expect and maybe better than they deserve (or you feel they deserve). Then you're investing your quantum in a good way. Also, it's good to remember that we're all ignorant, just about different things, and we all share the same hard-wiring that causes people to project bad things into dark spaces and thus treat each other poorly. If you happen to know more about $topic and thus can see how ignorant others are, that's not because you're better than them, or any different from them in the end. It's an accident of circumstance.
This has been eating me up all day in case you happen to check in again.
I didn't start posting to whine about being banned a few months ago, I was more concerned about the immediate thread.. but since you brought up my posts, you specifically told me while banning me that civility wasn't "good enough". I was doing this exact recommended pattern of responding patiently and civilly at the moment that you banned me.
Maybe I'm just really oblivious, or a congenitally bad poster, but what would be good enough? It's irrelevant since I'm banned but I always like to self-improve if I can, there must be something I'm missing here. If you're busy or don't see this, no biggie.
There are two levels to consider. At the individual post level, conversation needs to be thoughtful, respectful of the other person, and patient when correcting wrong information or responding to bad arguments. If that's what you mean by civility, that's good (we stopped using that word years ago, but that's a separate issue).
At the overall account level, an account needs to be using HN for its intended purpose, which is intellectual curiosity. It's not ok to post primarily on battle topics (like nationalistic ones or ideological ones or partisan ones), because curiosity doesn't work that way. If the primary use of one's energy is for nationalistic or political battle, that pretty much guarantees that curiosity is not part of the mix. I've written extensively about this in the past:
The CCP is quite unlikely to come out with a quote that they're cracking down because they feel insecure in their position. Very unusual for any regime to admit that. But it seems the most obvious reading of the situation.
> I think Xi is quite clear on his view of China's place in the world
Yes, Xi may have a view. Again, the problem for the regime, and presumably the reason for Xi's crackdowns, is that China, as in the population, is less clear on its view of Xi's place in China.
I will be pleasantly amused if China's imperial aspirations actually stop at Taiwan. It would be so tempting to turn the Belt and Road into an invasion route.
> I will be pleasantly amused if China's imperial aspirations actually stop at Taiwan
For a Western person, with the implicit cultural and historical ethos, and the actual modern history, it's natural to apply aggressive stance to a rising power.
For a Chinese who had the same kind of knowledge from the Chinese heritage, it's laughable to expand. China in the Han dynasty, already figured out that expansion just results into stretch of power and evetual breakdown, which is natural for any complex system. So that's what happened after Wu Di the second great emperor after Shi Huang, he realized his military expansion in the end does not achieve it's strategic goal, I.e., extinguish the roaming noamd tribes from the earth. He even wrote a self criticizing official doc to confess. And changed the policy to use economic and royal marriage to manage the nomad tribes.
You can equate the cultural and economic management as expansion, just like what US did in 20 century. But that's inevitable anyway. I.e., culturally and economically advanced nations are mimicked by others even if they are not doing anything...
Those were under Chinese sphere since Tang dynasty. But not a formal sovereign subject. This relatively weak bound was fine at the old time, since the farther outsphere does not have the influence to encroach to the Chinese sphere.
In 19 & 20 century, things changed. Those strategic areas have to be under China's control for national security, which was under siege from Russia (the most expansionism nation on earth).
Like USSR inherited Russia's imperial territory, and India inherited great Britain's, CCP conveniently inherited Qing empire's as well (indirectly through KMT, the nine dashed line was a KMT invention...).
This is projection. Just because our rulers would do it, and our idiotic war media would find some "humanitarian" fig leaf to justify it, doesn't mean that all, or even median, humans would.
Invade where? Tajikistan? The thing about belt and road is.. we could do that, too. Instead we blow a fortune in the middle east and get salty at them for being smarter.
As far as china's ambitions go, anything can change but they have a long, long history of non-interventionism. It's hard to justify ideologically when they teach every schoolkid about the century of humiliation and the evils of colonialism.
Your current account has an unmistakeable pattern of using HN primarily for ideological and nationalistic battle. I believe you're posting in good faith in the sense that you sincerely hold your views and are not misrepresenting yourself —as some people have complained, and as I'm happy to say in response to the complaints. That's not enough, though. You're clearly not using HN as intended, and you're clearly violating the site guidelines.
We ban accounts that use HN primarily for political/ideological/nationalistic battle because they destroy this community for the thing it is supposed to be for: respectful, curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. Therefore I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. As you know, they're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I didn't say you were disrespectful. Actually I'm grateful for the amount of restraint I noticed in your posts—especially since you're representing a minority point of view, as we've discussed more than once in the past. All that is fine.
The problem is that that's not enough. Accounts that use HN primarily (exclusively?) for political/ideological/nationalistic arguments are breaking the site guidelines. This site is supposed to be for curious conversation on intellectually gratifying topics, and an account that only uses HN for arguing about $hot-divisive-topic (be it China or any other) is clearly going against that spirit.
That's just not an accurate summary of my posting history. I post on a wide range of topics. The last 2 weeks I posted about bitcoin, education policy, tax policy, the British royal family, software architecture and that upvoted comment on the Chappelle thread that you flagged (which was admittedly wading into the muck a bit).
I'm sympathetic to the fact that flame wars about China are too common here, and hey, banning the non-american point of view might end them, circlejerks can only go so far on their own. So maybe you're right, but I wouldn't be super satisfied with that solution.
We're not "banning the non-American point of view" and I don't think you should stoop to such a cheap shot, which is exactly the sort of thing that garden-variety trolls come up with. I've consistently defended the minority viewpoint here [1], not out of political agreement but because I know how difficult their position is, and how most of them are posting in good faith—they're not spies, shills, bots, or agents, they're legit HN users whose background or relationships have naturally led them to their views.
> That's just not an accurate summary of my posting history.
I looked through your most recent 60 comments and counted 9 that weren't on flamewar topics, and that was being generous, because several of the latter were about Bitcoin and religion. It's true that a few were about software - but on the other side, quite a few of the other 51 were blatantly breaking the site guidelines. On balance, your account has clearly been using HN primarily for ideological/political/nationalistic battle. As you know, we ban such accounts. I spend a lot of time replying to people who feel that we don't apply these rules evenhandedly (from all ideological/political/national sides, btw), so I think it's pretty important to actually do so.
[1] I put this list together yesterday for a user who emailed because they were worrying about Chinese spies on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod. I think it makes the situation pretty clear, if anyone has the stamina to slog through it.
Just so long as we're clear that my "ideological battle" was scattershot takes across a bunch of different topics. I'd hate to be thought of as having a coherent ideology :)
China has a long history of non-interventionism, but the Communist Party does not. Now that the CCP controls China, I don’t expect China’s track record in that regard to continue. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is b/c China wasn’t powerful enough, but that’s clearly changing.
If they don't want to restrict themselves to accredited investors, they could alternatively adhere to SEC guidelines for selling financial instruments to the public. Clear auditing, GAAP, prospectus including a frank discussion of risks, etc. It's really not that high a bar, considering the $ involved.
You can't ask for no accountability, these rules are written in blood (or red, I guess).
> they could alternatively adhere to SEC guidelines for selling financial instruments to the public. Clear auditing, GAAP, prospectus including a frank discussion of risks, etc.
Imo it would make it worse. Most of widely available standard financial instruments are based on some sort of contractual obligations of responsible parties, assets, operations. Risk analysis has been developing for decades for these instruments, and then enter Gamestop and AMC…
What would you put in prospectus for bitcoin, ethereum, level 2 cryptos or colored bitcoin? Or something like dash or monero? How do you estimate risk and impact of the upcoming ethereum fork?
Using the same guidelines for crypto as for standard financial instruments, will
make it look like one of the known investment interests, while in fact, it is fundamentally different. I would say anyone, who tries to sell you a bitcoin under disguise of investment with some known risk properties is misleading.
You might need to be accredited to invest in a bank that operates on bitcoin, or have all your money parked on an exchange that operates in bitcoin, unless they're willing to do the paperwork. These are things that can and should be audited regularly if they're going to hold a lot of people's money.
And one similarity: Louis CK is still highly criticized for going back on tour by the same people that criticized him 5-7 years ago. That is what was being discussed, scroll up to learn more.
How is it a similarity if it's only happened to one of them? Chappelle hasn't been criticized after 5-7 years for returning to stand up.
You can't ignore why someone is being criticized when discussing whether other people who are being criticized for different reasons will be treated the same way.
Joe Rogan's comments keep coming up in the context of discussion of this issue in recent news; many people are still mad. You've picked a poor example.
Thank you for agreeing, many (a word you used first) people are still upset about Rogan's comments, disproving your point that "none" are. If you have anything but blind speculation you're going on, feel free to provide it!
>I was pretty sure you wouldn't have any criticism more nuanced than "FAKE NEWS," but it's nice to see it confirmed.
And as usual, you're wrong. You still haven't linked any study or non-yellow journalism that tries to objectively capture how "many" people are still mad at Joe Rogan.
>I provided a few links because you're apparently unable to use search engines.
A few links to fake news outposts that did not support your claim whatsoever. If you can't find a legitimate claim to your original statement, it can be dismissed outright. You still haven't found anything, and so you're claims are dismissed.
Study? You're hoping for a peer-reviewed science journal that published an article on who's offended by Joe Rogan?
The original claim was that the total number of people still offended by COVID-victim Joe Rogan's comments was "none." No evidence supports that claim, so we can dismiss it outright, like you said.
I've posted evidence to support mine, your defense is a thought-terminating cliché coined by a game show host.
We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments and using HN primarily for ideological battle. Those things are against the site guidelines because (a) they are not what this site is for, and (b) they destroy what it is for—regardless of which ideology you're battling for or against.
We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments and using HN primarily for ideological battle. Those things are against the site guidelines because (a) they are not what this site is for, and (b) they destroy what it is for—regardless of which ideology you're battling for or against.
It's the same conundrum as some open source projects who put up a BLM banner at the height of the protests last year. How do you ever remove it now? Not that the issues have been fixed but there's more than one issue in the world and you're a json library.
Plenty of overengineered projects became fragile messes as well, it's hard. You need to actively break some subset of "best practices" on any given project.
I don't think I've seen a US/UK MSM article comparing China to us favorably in at least 5 years. Ive seen dozens or hundreds beating the drum against them..
It's a major coincidence for such a free press, right?
> I don't think I've seen a US/UK MSM article comparing China to us favorably in at least 5 years. Ive seen dozens or hundreds beating the drum against them..
There is no shortage of articles published by Western media suggesting that China is out-hustling and out-innovating the US, and that the West is in decline as China rises.
This alone doesn't entitle China to praise or admiration. It's an authoritarian total surveillance state in which information is censored, citizens have little to no recourse when harmed by government action, enemies of the state disappear, and ethnic minorities are rounded up and sent to camps for "reeducation".
If somebody came onto HN posting obviously dumb stuff about how American people feel and think, they'd be downvoted, because everyone can see the obvious falsehood.
But when it's Chinese, majority vote of Americans decides the truth! They will tell you the real deal on how things work inside China. And if someone calls them morons, we have you to come in and keep things civil.