I have seen this before and it is truly disturbing for those who have come to the comments first. It shows a man locked in a tiger chair being questioned as to why he talked badly about the police on a forum. He is completely restrained. I can only imagine the feeling. This is disturbing so please be warned. How can we make a difference as an individual?
Because the source would probably be re-educated to death by now. Not sure why people expect 21st century levels of public discourse from a country that literally has re-education centers for tens of thousands of people (if not not more) who have the only fault of being of the wrong religion.
I would like to see the evidence that this isn't just some actors in costumes.
It's easy to believe something like this happened in real life and got video taped. Certainly more unbelievable things have been caught on film. But it's also easy to believe it's a hoax, and it'd be an easy hoax to pull off.
Yes to be the devils advocate get, what if this really is a hoax to get the rest of the world riled up against China?
Except that we do have leaks like the China cables which are generally viewed a as authentic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Cables IMO the rest of the wield needs to realize that this is nazi germany levels of crazy that are starting up again, and realize that Bernie ww3 breaks out.
I saw this video a few weeks ago and wondered, how does a video like this get released? It sounds like the person recording is also doing the questioning, and it also doesn't feel like this is the kind of video that would be willingly shared as propaganda. So why is it online?
It actually makes me slightly doubt whether it's real or faked. I mean, it's not that hard to get 2 fake police outfits and a room and put together a fancy chair. And they do pan away pretty suddenly from the police officers. And why even show the police officers, like hey check out these two totally real cops? Why are they even recording in the first place?
I'm not saying it's actually fake, but for me enough things don't quite add up that I personally chose to go with "this doesn't affect my opinions because I have no clue if it's true or not" on this one. It's slightly worrisome that outside of HN (I've seen this on Reddit and in other tweets) I have not seen doubt expressed in any way. I think it's generally good to doubt things and we may be in big trouble if the global trend is to believe everything you see.
Or the smart phone got repaired (and cloned), or the guy had a bad conscious afterwards, or he shared it with friends who then published it etc. So many reasons.
I hope for the sake of person being interrogated that it is fake but this could be a tactic for intimidating other protestors who are not firmly committed and have other responsibilities in life to worry about.
Watching as your comment gets downvoted, I think HN has an issue of brigading, and there is mostly nothing users can do to prevent it. Stories get flagged, comments are downvoted to bury them, flamewars are provoked to push down actionable information, and those behind these activities will ultimately win, unless we spend our afternoons documenting every instance of it and reporting it to moderators, which obviously won't happen.
Only HN has the power to proactively discover accounts which show inauthentic behavior that consistently leans towards depressing the propagation of news about the erosion of human rights and the prevalence of corporate surveillance.
This place is an important ideological battleground, because many developers who build and maintain surveillance systems are reading HN.
We've been through this a gazillion times and the upshot is that the site guidelines ask you not to post insinuations of brigading, astroturfing, foreign spying, and all the rest of it, unless you have some evidence for saying so—in which case you should email hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Someone posting internet comments that you strongly disagree with is not evidence of any of that; it's evidence merely that people have opposing views on divisive topics—a phenomenon that hardly requires explanation.
I've spent years investigating this stuff on HN and can tell you that the overwhelming finding—and I do mean overwhelming—is that nearly all comments like what you posted here are purely imaginary. This is simply how the mind reacts to offensive things on the internet: we assume that people couldn't possibly be posting such obviously wrong and awful stuff in good faith, so we make up a sinister story to explain it. These sinister stories actually do far more damage to the site than the things they're claiming. The underlying reality is that the community is simply much more divided and diverse than most readers assume it is. Posting poisonous stories makes it more so. That's why I post about this so often; it's probably the single most destructive internet trope that we see here.
Is it possible that far more successful manipulation is going on than any of our investigations have ever uncovered? Sure it is. But if you go down that road, you have to relinquish any need for evidence of any kind, which puts you in the wilderness of mirrors. That can't be right. So the principle we apply is that there needs to be some relevant evidence of some kind, any kind—just something objective to go on before making these sorts of accusations—and that already rules out over 99% of these claims.
By the way: you broke another site guideline also, the one that asks you not to go on about downvoting because it never does any good and makes boring reading. There's a third reason too: it usually ends up completely inaccurate, as it did in this case, because the GP comment has now been heavily upvoted. Meanwhile the complaint sticks around, adding off-topic and false information to the thread.
>I’ve always (and that’s not ranting. I really have) wondered if it was on purpose.
Of course it's on purpose. No one would watch a police procedural drama where the police always lost, were inept, or only won their cases due to corruption or malfeasance, or where the criminals were never caught and cases never resolved. Showing the heroes defeating the villains isn't propaganda, it's just good storytelling.
I'm not sure what western TV dramas have to do with the Chinese government putting people in tiger chairs and forcing confessions out of them over posts on the internet.
Fictional TV shows are hardly comparable to video in the OP.
This breaks the site guideline against insinuating that someone is astroturfing or a shill or a bot or a foreign agent. If you think you're seeing evidence of abuse, email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. But please don't insert this poison into the threads—it's the cheapest of cheap shots, and based on everything we've seen (which is a lot), is actually far more destructive than the thing it's imagining to combat.
For me, it doesn'tmatter if ut's fake. It's possible. I boycott the communist government and Chinese products whenever I can. I discount Chinese products and prefer alternatives from other countries (and no, this is not racist as my wife is Chinese and she even has stronger opinions than me).
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 72.2 ms ] threadIt worked against apartheid in South Africa. But that was pretty easy. Avoiding Chinese stuff is much harder.
But yes, it'd be very hard to avoid buying from China.
So what's possible? Political action?
That seems unlikely too. It'd be hard even as a country to boycott China. The US economy would collapse if it tried, I bet.
It's easy to believe something like this happened in real life and got video taped. Certainly more unbelievable things have been caught on film. But it's also easy to believe it's a hoax, and it'd be an easy hoax to pull off.
Except that we do have leaks like the China cables which are generally viewed a as authentic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Cables IMO the rest of the wield needs to realize that this is nazi germany levels of crazy that are starting up again, and realize that Bernie ww3 breaks out.
It actually makes me slightly doubt whether it's real or faked. I mean, it's not that hard to get 2 fake police outfits and a room and put together a fancy chair. And they do pan away pretty suddenly from the police officers. And why even show the police officers, like hey check out these two totally real cops? Why are they even recording in the first place?
I'm not saying it's actually fake, but for me enough things don't quite add up that I personally chose to go with "this doesn't affect my opinions because I have no clue if it's true or not" on this one. It's slightly worrisome that outside of HN (I've seen this on Reddit and in other tweets) I have not seen doubt expressed in any way. I think it's generally good to doubt things and we may be in big trouble if the global trend is to believe everything you see.
Public displays of criminals, trials and punishments are not uncommon in China, and serve as a "legal education" for the public.
Only HN has the power to proactively discover accounts which show inauthentic behavior that consistently leans towards depressing the propagation of news about the erosion of human rights and the prevalence of corporate surveillance.
This place is an important ideological battleground, because many developers who build and maintain surveillance systems are reading HN.
Someone posting internet comments that you strongly disagree with is not evidence of any of that; it's evidence merely that people have opposing views on divisive topics—a phenomenon that hardly requires explanation.
I've spent years investigating this stuff on HN and can tell you that the overwhelming finding—and I do mean overwhelming—is that nearly all comments like what you posted here are purely imaginary. This is simply how the mind reacts to offensive things on the internet: we assume that people couldn't possibly be posting such obviously wrong and awful stuff in good faith, so we make up a sinister story to explain it. These sinister stories actually do far more damage to the site than the things they're claiming. The underlying reality is that the community is simply much more divided and diverse than most readers assume it is. Posting poisonous stories makes it more so. That's why I post about this so often; it's probably the single most destructive internet trope that we see here.
Is it possible that far more successful manipulation is going on than any of our investigations have ever uncovered? Sure it is. But if you go down that road, you have to relinquish any need for evidence of any kind, which puts you in the wilderness of mirrors. That can't be right. So the principle we apply is that there needs to be some relevant evidence of some kind, any kind—just something objective to go on before making these sorts of accusations—and that already rules out over 99% of these claims.
Plenty more explanation here for those who want it and have the patience: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
By the way: you broke another site guideline also, the one that asks you not to go on about downvoting because it never does any good and makes boring reading. There's a third reason too: it usually ends up completely inaccurate, as it did in this case, because the GP comment has now been heavily upvoted. Meanwhile the complaint sticks around, adding off-topic and false information to the thread.
« Bad guys always caught, police can know whatever you’ve done »
I’ve always (and that’s not ranting. I really have) wondered if it was on purpose.
Of course it's on purpose. No one would watch a police procedural drama where the police always lost, were inept, or only won their cases due to corruption or malfeasance, or where the criminals were never caught and cases never resolved. Showing the heroes defeating the villains isn't propaganda, it's just good storytelling.
But I’d agree they are not procedural shows.
And TBH, on my point of view, manichean stories are not that good storytelling. On the contrary (but there’s room for everyone taste)
Fictional TV shows are hardly comparable to video in the OP.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html