I wonder how many accounts the chinese state maintains on hackernews to upvote/downvote post and comments. It's an easy way to influence the public opinion and hard to expose.
I am not pro-Chinese, I am French with no ties to China. But I have downvoted/flagged anti-China posts and comments a few times.
There is an anti-China sentiment in the US that just feels wrong, and it shows on HN. Every time something good is said about the Chinese state, or even if it is "not that bad", it is Chinese propaganda. Every time someone says that China is evil, it is the truth, as if US propaganda couldn't exist. I am not saying that China is good, just that it is one-sided enough to raise a few red flags (pun not intended).
So, I downvote, most of it isn't interesting from a tech perspective anyways. It what I think of that submission. In fact, I am only here because I was curious about what "deep blue" meant (for me it meant IBM).
You are free to disagree with me, here I am just telling you that there is at least one person who has nothing to do with the Chinese state and dislike anti-China content.
You could even argue that whenever China does something positive that's note-worthy then it has a much higher chance to be promoted multiple times (e.g. 3/5 are about the Mars rover, all within a month) and less chance that it will be flagged (or at least remain flagged).
I think it's safe to assume the majority of HN support democracy, privacy, freedom of speech & press, and similar civil liberties that China have cracked heavily down upon and not just within their own borders. When you look at what they have done in the past few years with Xinjiang, Hong Kong, SARS2, Taiwan, etc. then it's only natural that there will be a lot of negative coverage, and this negative coverage is understandably and deservedly greater than the positive coverage. If USA or any other country banned under-18s from playing games for more than three hours/week then it would receive the same amount of coverage. Same thing goes for for Swiss Ph.D student’s dismissal, Steam being banned, cryptocurrency deals becoming illegal, blocking Wikimedia from entering World Intellectual Property Organization and every other story you might consider "anti-China". My submission doesn't even mention China so people are not blindly upvoting it because it's "anti-China", but more likely because it's interesting to see proof that one of the largest Asian YouTube channels (which cover a lot more than just China) is planting interviewees to push a certain agenda (keep in mind the channel put a lot of emphasis towards presenting themselves as being 'authentic' and sharing views of random and regular people they meet on the streets).
Not many, I think. I usually look at the new section of HN and check what has been flagged unreasonably. Anti-chinese post are rarely flagged multiple times.
My opinion is that there are honest pro-chinese people on HN, most likely chinese working in the US who don't plan to stay for life and feel patriotic enough to protect the fatherland on internet forums.
Agree, just I'm lacking the evidence. Plus, we might overrate the importance of HN for the CCP. Most of their thought control is for internal use. The external influence is usually based on money and access to the chinese market, not by thrall farms. Exceptions apply to social media, but I think that they concentrate on the large platforms like FB, Twitter and Youtube.
This is almost certainly it. HN is first and foremost a technology website and its userbase is tiny in the grand scheme of things. I get that we like to think we're the center of the universe, but is it so inconceivable that even if the CCP knew we existed, it wouldn't care?
And also non-Chinese people that support the PRC, like myself. Many of us are communists, but not all.
The trend on HN is indeed quite clearly anti-China and anti-communist, so Chinese propaganda is definitely less successful than that of the US and Western Europe.
I'm not a communist (I'm not an ML(M), to be specific) but I do have a self-destructive compulsion to put up tepid contextual defenses of western adversary states like China, Russia, and Iran. I don't think they're universally wonderful places with perfect benevolent rulers, but the way most people here are completely delusional about these countries, from history to present conditions and motivations, can be frustrating. It's a soft (and sometimes hard) chauvinism which is a little sad coming from a group that likes to think of itself as fair and critical thinkers.
Also the implicit dehumanization ("they have no culture") of the people who live in these places can be really disgusting.
You are one public forum. People can disagree with your messages just as you can disagree with others. If you don't want pushback write a blog and disable comments.
There is a difference between "nobody should be allowed to disagree with me" and "it's regrettable that most people hold what I consider to be very regressive positions on this topic." I don't think anyone is expressing the former.
Surely I can critique the collective behaviour of a particular public forum without excluding myself from it? Different fora differ drastically in behaviour, after all.
I am pro Chinese myself, I’m not getting paid by anybody, and I can assure you that posting pro Chinese comments here gets them flagged pretty quickly. But I’m not sure if it is because people don’t like those opinions or because they think it’s unlikely anybody can be pro Chinese so they automatically think you are a propaganda account. It could very well be either, based on my past experiences posting comments that go against the “allowed” politics of the site.
Metformin is the pharmaceutical version of Berberine [1] You can get Berberine without a prescription. Metformin has been used in the US for about 40 years and Berberine in Asia for about 3000 years, initially used to treat gut infections.
A couple things to note if you take either of those is that they put a heavy load on the liver and also deplete vitamin B12. It may be worth keeping an eye on liver enzymes if using either. Hydration is also important. I should also add that if you start doing either to stay near a restroom for the first few weeks.
Metformin may delay the onset of some chronic metabolic diseases but it won't extend maximum lifespan and there are significant negative side effects. It's certainly not a fountain of youth. Proper diet and exercise can deliver most of the same benefits with no medical drawbacks.
I think many (personal) blogs were killed by social media. You don't blog about your last weekend anymore, you just post some pictures on instagram or in your whatsapp groups.
Killed or just appear pale in comparison? How many traffics were there for blogs in before 2010? Its not like people suddenly don't have anything interesting to share.
Which means - whether we like it or no - that social media were and are superior products when it comes to this specific use case, otherwise people won't be using it.
I don't think our average Carl will use a blog instead of Instagram to share his thoughts.
Yes, inferior products prevail from time to time, especially when those negative externalities you mention help consolidate a dominant position.
But social networks do not charge money. People are free to open as many blogs as they want. If they didn't when they were raging in the early 2000s there must a reason.
Reality is complex, especially human motivations. But to argue that blogs are a superior for the mainstream public to share themselves to an audience is a bit intellectually unfair.
Only if you think within the structures of a particular ideology based on the notions that people are rational actors and that the market produces the most effective solutions for any given use case.
Most people didn't blog in order to produce great art or advance human knowledge. Those who did, they tend to still blog.
But most regular Joe bloggers just wanted to share ideas or experiences with other people, connect with them, and hear _their_ ideas and experiences. Writing a 500-word blog post was just the means to start a chat in the comments section. For them, Facebook or Twitter do it better.
I remember when Tumblr started (it didn't have a specific culture yet). Some of my blogging friends opened a Tumblr just to share links and pictures, and kept to WordPress for long-form posts. Eventually, they quickly started spending more times in link exchanging and commenting on Tumblr than on WP.
The US produces much more economic output per ton of CO2 created than China. Carbon efficiency of economic output is a key metric that we should be optimizing for. This allows us to grow the economy on a per capita basis while still reducing absolute carbon emissions.
"Economic output per ton of CO2" looks like a red herring to me. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere in this thread, the climate doesn't care about economic output.
I'm not saying we won't see costs from decarbonising. We will. I'm saying that worrying too much about the economics will significantly impede the necessary work (as it has done for the past 50 years). It's quite likely that the current financial system is the wrong tool for the job in fixing this problem, now.
Why does it matter? You should care about the absolute numbers. The amount of CO2 the earth can reasonably sustain doesn't go up as the global population grows...
China is more or less a single political body. If you're talking about large scale political coordination to prevent climate events, then it makes sense to focus on the largest autonomous contributor
A problem in which everyone is supposed to suffer a little to prevent greater collective suffering in the future.
It has one important characteristic: everyone would rather not suffer and let some else suffer. When problems are like that, there is need for coordination, for people to agree on what is a fair amount of suffering for each actor.
I happen to agree that CO2 per capita is a much better measure of what is fair, especially when comparing the US and China, both countries that are growing very little in population
Another important characteristic is that one tribe has already enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) significant quality of life enhancements due to much higher consumption of fossil fuel per capita.
Politically, you’re simply not going to get anywhere with asking everyone to suffer “a little”.
Also, the whole detached single family house with 2 car garage on quarter acre lot has to go, but Americans are not going to give it up, and other countries’ people aspiring for it are certainly not going to give it up.
Those comments about some economies going carbon negative are making more sense when you see it as a coordination problem with the fairness issue.
Its like, China should grow its carbon consumption by no more than X, and we will go 0 and capture. That is quite possibly a fair way, and still cooperation from all the parties
If I had a source I would be reporting it to the SEC, the FBI and any newspaper that would print it, though of course that would likely be none. This is all speculation, obviously.
Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi, LG will demand this feature if they sell less phones because people switch to apple. Or they will implement it by themself and gain an edge about competitors who don't have it.
Actually at this point I don't know anyone who uses social media applications. My kids, well teenagers, use iMessage and SMS and coordinate on Discord (that's not really a social network). My wife uses word of mouth and local referrals to run her hair business with communication via SMS/iMessage/email and a bookings app she has. All my friends use use email and iMessage. My parents both use email and/or SMS too.
The only thing I use any form of social media for is signing up to Twitter to tag Royal Mail or Hermes delivery in complaints about twice a year because they actually listen if you shitpost in public.
I see society functioning exactly how it did before if in 30 seconds time social media disappeared off the face of the planet.
I think your samples might be biased. tiktok has 800 million active users, Instagram has over 1 billion, and fb has 2.70 billion. Even with 100% overlap, that's still 35% of the planet
My understanding (not living there) is that in the US, Apple have a dominant position in group chat via their proprietary embrace-extend-extinguish version of SMS.
In my experience, it's relatively straightforward to get people to switch off WhatsApp/Messenger to Signal/Telegram, since it's just another app. It'd be more difficult if it held a privileged position in the OS.
This is getting harder and harder as Apple’s ecosystem becomes more comprehensive and more integrated. There are benefits of course but it’s pretty sticky.
OTOH I dumped Facebook years ago and haven’t missed it for a second. WhatsApp has proven a lot harder to wean off of since my friends refuse to switch.
Same situation with WhatsApp. It's deeply engrained in my home country's social groups. One group of friends followed me to Telegram, along with my direct family... but my more distant relatives and other groups of friends didn't bite. The other difficult one was Facebook Messenger.
Guess I'm banking on people finally realizing how creepy Facebook is. But since some of my friends have abandoned Facebook in favor of Instagram, of all places... guess I'm playing the long game.
I uninstalled WhatsApp two years back and just told everyone I use Signal. No big lecture on Facebook is evil, why you have to use Signal etc etc.
Most people are busy being told what apps to install every 2 hours by some one or the other so they are already conditioned to being told what to do. Many just installed without even a question, cause they get tired of using sms or email with me for everything.
Yes! If you are reading this, please give Signal a try.
You might be surprised that a few people in your contact list might already have signal.
Signal has (or will very soon have, depending on when you update) group calls! This is very exciting I think. Together with the new and improved group chat, now is the perfect time to get started with Signal if you aren’t here already.
You might have more pull than you think. I was able to get my mum on signal on her iPhone. You don’t need everyone you know to be on signal. Let’s start with just the ones you talk to the most.
I understand wanting to get rid of FB, but whats your reason for whatsapp? Whatsapp is end to end encrypted, so they can't get access to your messages, no? Is it just that they are owned by FB, or do you have greater security / privacy concerns that I am missing?
Whatsapp contents are secure, but who you are talking to - what groups, what time, how often, is all valuable information.
If you are in a group with a lot of Facebook users that have elementary school kids but are otherwise unrelated, chances are you have one too. Facebook might even infer who you are, and your kids, even if you don’t have an account
Not to mention that most users continuously sync their contact list, and with that info FB can create a much broader and more precise graph of all the network connections. Cross that with, say, political groups you're part of, and you're not only exposing yourself but everybody else who's close to you, regardless of them using either app.
Same boat here. I dumped WhatsApp mostly because it's owned by Facebook, which I consider a bit of a privacy risk by itself. On top of that, the app requests access to lots of permissions I don't understand the need for.
Some examples: find accounts on the device, view WiFi connections, retrieve running apps, use biometric hardware.
"Find accounts on the device" is possibly required to connect to your account in order to get your contact list. "View WiFi connections" is possibly needed for getting internet connection.
I can't really see any possible use for the other two though.
I've only looked extremely shallowly at Android development, but I am aware that quite often you need to ask for some particular permission to get access to something that's not particularly obvious from the permission name.
Not trying to give Facebook a free ride here, I am well aware that there is a very high chance they want some of the permissions for "nefarious" purposes. I think companies should have some transparent way of publishing why they want a particular set of permissions.
I have seen companies showing a message along the lines of "we will be asking for <permission> we need to ask this for <reason>" and I do think more companies should do this.
Which is the reason a lot of people refuse to use the Apple ecosystem. I do own an iPad but I use it exclusively for web browsing, email and reading books.
The only Apple app I use is the default Books apps and that is it, and I couldn't be happier.
Using an Apple device without having to deal with Apple's ecosystem is amazing, I only wish they would let Chrome be Chrome, not a reskin of Safari...
Here are the 10 most impressive ones that have generated millions in revenue with 0 employees"