I'm sure the next time an NSA scandal is exposed that'll get taken down immediately too... right?
HN hasn't "decided" anything like what you say. The issue is that nationalistic flamewar makes people angry and dumb (and worse). People who want to rant and post denunciatory rhetoric—whom there are a lot of, and growing—need to find another place to do that. Thoughtful, curious conversation on China-related topics is as fine here, as it is on other topics, and as it always has been.
The way we operate HN hasn't changed. What has changed are macro social and geopolitical trends. We can't expect HN to be immune from those, but certainly we need to protect it from degenerating into a flamewar site, and that is what the vast majority of this community wants from us.
I understand and commend the taking down of nationalistic flamewars, for the most part. But that way of operating has one flaw: it gives cover for very back things being carried out, since very bad things are polarising and therefore its denouncing a "flamewar".
I apologise for the question because there is no way to ask it that isn't polarising, but I would really like to know: If Nazi Germany was putting Jews in trains right now, would a post about it get removed from HN? It's a serious question, I think your users deserve to know.
A lot has come from (D)arpa, intelligence contracts, military development, law enforcement.
The US has also privatized a lot of intelligence and military sectors where consultants and others perform jobs that the government might not strictly be allowed.
I think this may be the end of the American experiment. How can you have mostly open organic institutions that anyone can influence and keep out bad actors, especially when one of those actors is another enormous state with the ability to plan and execute plans over decades?
I feel like pre-internet and the current level of globalization this would make some sense, but why would the end result here not be a corruption of open institutions by powerful bad actors?
Company’s should also question who they are really getting foreign money from and for what purpose. An individual can also choose not to work for a company if they do not agree with their apparent values.
I personally don't think this title or video are relevant in the slightest on HN, and despite Reddit thinking China controls the website, there are regularly 200,000+ upvoted anti-China messages and theories on the very front page that immediately disprove their argument that China has any pull on Reddit.
They have taken to deleting ANYTHING that mentions the CCPs investment in Chinese Tech, regardless of whether it's a cordial discussion or not. When people are asking "why would the US be concerned about a stupid app like Tik-Tok" and the response is: because the CCP is heavily invested which is concerning - that shouldn't be deleted. The fact it was brings into question the motivations of the moderators...
I trust reddit accounts about as far as I can throw them, and given they're just incorporeal information, I can't actually throw them at all.
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/OddballFairGerbil-mobile.mp4
https://giant.gfycat.com/OddballFairGerbil.webm
They should work better with the WaybackMachine, as links to the gfycat page result in a 404 in the archived versions.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18216134/reddit-tencent-i...
Why was this flagged? Chinese state behavior is absolutely relevant given their involvement in western tech.
Likely because it attracts unsubstantive comments.
Ironically, $$$
Also, wild speculation, but maybe it did get taken down. The footage shown is a recording of the live telemetry feed streamed to the base station, not the much higher quality video stored on the SD card on board the drone itself.
However, this isn't specifically Tencent. I don't know why the title doesn't highlight this is specifically the CCP.
