Comment by cship2 3 months ago
>You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet.
Think Binney, Snowden, Assange would probably disagree with you.
Their's an old joke about this:
A Russian is on an airliner heading to the US, and the American in the seat next to him asks, “So what brings you to the US?” The Russian replies, “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American says, “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”
This made me chuckle :) it truly is beautiful it's sad its one of those fields you can't take credit for what you do but the people running it deserve all the credit. An impossible ask but would be cool to read about the tech behind it in today's digital age.
The obvious answer is that the US is still a democracy with free media and rule of law. That means you're likely to be found out and have a huge scandal if you try to use government resources to manipulate the public at scale. This is somewhat confirmed by the huge scandals causes by relatively small scale manipulations, which form the somewhat worn examples commenters on this website like to bring up whenever criticism of China is voiced. Note that in China there is no such risk of discovery or pushback as media and courts are fully controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
I think Hitchens' short "Why Americans Are Not Taught History" (1998) provides a more compelling understanding:
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/history/goodbye-to-all-that-wh...
Would they? My understanding is that all their issues stem specifically from dealing in information the government has explicitly classified, rather than simply speech the government doesn't like. You can spend all day ranting about Uncle Sam on the internet, how the President is the worst person ever, etc etc, and the feds really couldn't care less, which is a _sharp_ contrast to China, where you can't share pictures of Winnie the Pooh because some wag once said they thought Xi looked like him.
> Think Binney, Snowden, Assange would probably disagree with you.
I guess you are trying to muddy the water here by invoking the names of people who are known for their resistance to a certain kind of American misbehaviour. That behaviour is not really the same as the kind of wide-ranging and complete media restrictions we are talking about, but it sounds kind of similar so this is a good way for you to do some whataboutism with extra steps.
If you think that American media is controlled in the same way at the same scale and intensity as Chinese media please provide your arguments for that view explicitly.
It's a cool phenomena tbh if I was rich enough to go to college I would love to do a thesis on it
We know both China and the US are nation states with global ambitions so it would be logical for both to use digital platforms to surveil and perform social engineering.
We also have had whistleblowers on both sides that have come forward and said this is a common practice. We also know based on simple game theory it is in the interest of any nation state to do so not just the US or China
But even on a site like HN that presents itself as rational and factual the sentiment is the US does not do any surveillance or social engineering.
And for the life of me I just don't understand why maybe nationalism? Or the aforementioned social engineering being so effective? But it is so cool to see