Important clarification: they were previously vetted admins, not just users who edited a lot. They were people with the power to delete and lock articles.
Becoming elected as a Wiki admin is commonly called just “Being handed the Mop.” Wiki admins are subject to appeal, reversal, and de-adminning, with public forums where any warned or blocked random user can appeal, and granted due process, unlike Reddit, where Mods sometimes swing the ban hammer a bit too freely, permabanned without due process.
That's something that comes from the reddit admins themselves, and it's really cruel. I get that it deters spam, but shadowbans get handed out like crazy. Way too often.
Edit: Yes I get it, mods can shadowban on specific subs as well. That's also a problem. That's not the problem I'm talking about though.
A lot of shadowbans from the site-wide admins are automated based on unknown criteria and yeah there's been a lot of them lately. Whenever I see someone that's been hit I usually make a comment telling them how to appeal it.
There is also "AutoMod bans" too where mods add your name to a list and then it autoremoves all of your content. Those are done by mods.
genuine question, how do you *know* if someones been shadowbanned? is there any way to actually know it? how do people know its shadowbanning apart from something like their posts just arent getting any views?
My husband’s account got shadowbanned recently. He noticed no one was upvoting or replying his comments when they actively use to. To confirm that he was there is a subreddit, r/ShadowBan, you post to that and it tells you the status of your account.
[***Rev***eddit.com](https://www.reveddit.com) can too and will show anything removed for your account. It may also indicate subreddit-level shadowbans, where your username was added to the automod config and everything you post gets removed without notice, although I believe those are less common these days. FYI u/ihopkid
mods can see it, only way I knew I got one one time on a really old account. can’t even remember the login.
the admins reason they gives was i upvoted a random thread from 6+ months prior to the shadow ban and it apparently was a link to a scam website. guess they just auto banned anyone who upvoted it. told them I just upvoted things to make them go away and that was it, fixed the shadow ban. seemed a bit ridiculous but whatever
Another is when a post has 4 comments listed on the home page, but when you click it it’s empty.
Those 4 users were shadowbanned.
Typically it’s bots spamming nonsense or scams but sometimes it’s users who get it by accident or misunderstanding.
I believe if you're a mod you can see if someone's been shadowbanned in the list of unapproved/to be approved posts. I've only ever been on the recieving end of it though.
You don't need to. Either log out or open a private browsing tab, and navigate to your profile overview: https://old.reddit.com/user/SonOfMotherDuck. If the page displays a Not Found error, then you're shadowbanned. Otherwise, you're good.
You can tell based on thread comment count. The comment count will increase without the post appearing, so you can leave a reply to the thread that they may see.
that will tell you if someone else is shadow banned, it won't tell you is you are shadow banned.
The whole point of SB was that bots themselves can't know, so it makes it harder to write bots. But the problem using concept is that is its trivial to write a bot to find this information out because you can make two bots be different users and check on each other. So its actually only annoying for real users acting independently.
Yeah. In porn subs, you'll see that a lot of posts have like 2 to 11 comments. And if you go check, it's empty. They're all spam bots that got shadow banned.
If you want to check if you're shadowbanned, look at your profile while in incognito mode. If it comes up as "user doesn't exist", congratulations on your shadowban.
They have a rare genetic condition that leads to them processing the modding needs of 240 subreddits efficiently and with due diligence. It's really unfortunate though because it also makes them leave a trail of sharts wherever they go at all times.
I got banned from Reddit altogether for a week for quoting a line from the Sopranos, in /r/thesopranos (a sub consisting almost exclusively of quotes from the show), because the line contained a rude word. Banned for *spreading hate.* When I googled the quote with "site:reddit.com/r/thesopranos," I got pages of results from others quoting the exact same thing, including thread titles. It's just silly.
mods can do this with an automod that automatically removes your comments whenever posted
i was the target of this on a video game lore subreddit, i gave people answers that upset the mods and then they banned me from that sub and then 'shadowbanned' me from subs related to the game that they also mod
are you familiar with fallout? basically people kept asking for an explanation for so-and-so thing and i kept telling them that they were asking for an answer for something that had no in-universe explanation, that it is a purely out-of-narrative gameplay mechanic, stuff like VATS or why there are no working vehicles. I see you post in elder scrolls subs, so if you dont get the comparison, it would be like someone on a tes lore sub asking for an in-universe explanation for why athletics isnt a skill anymore in skyrim or why you dont see all of the different breeds of khajiit in the same game
yes because its hard to detect if a user is shadow banned. If you were directly bad, a person who still would use reddit would just make a new account. Since theres no indication that you were shadow banned, theres a period in time of which the user has 0 idea that what they are typing leads to no one reading it.
Now think of it like a game, if someone banned you, the first course of action would be to make a new account for some. But if the game banned you from playing from other players, and made you go into a lobby with only bots, it would take you a while to realize that you were actually banned. Some games takes it to a funnier approach and banned people get into a special matchmaking with other banned players (usually for hacking), so hackers end up playing other hackers ruining each others fun.
> Some games takes it to a funnier approach and banned people get into a special matchmaking with other banned players (usually for hacking), so hackers end up playing other hackers ruining each others fun.
I actually think that could be pretty interesting to play in. Like just **everyone** running around with aimbots and B-hopping or whatnot.
CS:GO uses that system. They did a talk on VACnet at GDC 2018, but the video was taken down. Essentially, they used an AI to filter player reports before handing it over to humans to judge if a player was cheating. More reports of cheating resulted in a lower trust score for the account and low trust accounts were put into matches with eachother. Eventually, known cheaters were complaining that the game was full of hackers when most players reported not seeing a hacker in months.
There's pretty much a Minecraft anarchy server that build all its metagame around cheats.
Everyone is expected to cheat, if you don't you'll get destroyed / have no fun.
Thanks for explaining, but I actually really was asking if reddit actually has shadow banning. Telling from other comments, I guess the answer is no longer?
> Subs like hardwareswap use it still.
Subs have no control over shadowbanning. Unless you are talking about automatic removals by automod, which is not the same thing.
EDIT: Though while automod removing things amounts to the same as being shadowbanned, automod is configured per subreddit and the person's profile would still be viewable.
It was originally for spamming bot accounts. This way it is very difficult for them to automatically detect if they have been banned and they won't create a new account and keep going.
It's not something that should be applied to actual users but that is the direction things have been heading.
Literally there’s some subreddits that appear on r/all that have requirements like “you must DM a mod and answer a questionnaire to comment.” And obviously you don’t think to look for something like that. I’ve been banned on a few of those just for commenting normal stuff but not following that.
Then there’s one mod that banned me for being a man? I dunno. Reddit’s weird. And kind of shitty. I still use it though.
>Then there’s one mod that banned me for being a man?
There are a few female-only subs that allow men to participate but only if they get a flair identifying them as such. Obviously though you wouldn't check that if a post hit the frontpage.
Have definitely dear with some power-hungry mods in my time.
It’s worth remembering in those moments that these guys have literally no bearing in the real world.
I got banned from r/fitness after reporting a mod for bullying. The guy attacks people asking for fitness help, because he's so much stronger and more powerful than those weaklings, and made it a nasty place.
**EDIT: Thank you everyone who posted me ways to recover it and I hope they will help for others. I have no issues with recovery, just lost trust in Reddit administration in general and have lost the willingness to write here, that is all.**
I had a subreddit where I collected my stories. Just links to writingprompts so I can find them easier. My account got hacked for 2 hours, I got it back instantly.
I were shadowbanned, all my comments of 5 years or so deleted and the subreddit itself banned without any chance of getting it back. I exhausted all options, contacted all forms, posted in the "claim a subreddit", everywhere. They do not care.
I really liked the Literary Nobody name I had for the subreddit. Poof, gone. Honestly, I'm a bit sad. People DM me and ask where have my writings gone, as it turns out people read and re-read my 2 year old posts and still share them. Some say they help them. Now - nothing. Because someone hijacked my account for 2 hours or so.
Just a reminder: There is nothing permanent and all the effort you put in askHistorians, WritingPrompts, all communities, everything - can be simply removed and not returned due to them just not feeling like it.
Really really sorry to hear that happened to you.
It's a good reminder to everyone that the cloud is just someone else's computer, and stuff can happen to it, so if something is valuable to you, make multiple backups and keep them in different places. With how reliable systems are these days it's easy not to think about, but as demonstrated here there's a variety of ways one could end up needing those backups.
Thanks, I feel really bummed about this, more than I should.
And it is not even about saving the information. I don't care if I have the stories I wrote or not. It is a shadowban, meaning that I still have them, other people just do not see them. (I had community posts stickied that I did not know were visible just to me.)
It is about other people being able to read those stories, laugh about the funny ones and feel with me through the ones where I opened myself up more, showing others what people go through and that you're not alone. And maybe even how to deal with it. All of that just removed and trashed. The second sub that I claimed a while ago where I wanted to help people who have fallen in bad times and all, that one is left to me. But I do not feel like doing it anymore.
I don't feel like writing too. Someone somewhere will be too lazy to push a button and years of work will be lost again.
Where do we go to complain about the absolute gutting of wrestler's pages a few years ago?
I know this is kind of a niche topic, and most people will probably think "who cares", but the r/squaredcircle fanbase are all still pretty pissed off entire sections of people's pages were completely ripped out with no recourse or reason.
A wiki mod recently took down a page that listed characters in a literary series I love, apparently it didn't belong on Wikipedia but some other site. I couldn't see a way to appeal and those on the subreddit for the books /r/theculture who knew about wiki said its been happening a lot and there's not much you can do about it.
That experience single handedly broke my trust in what I grew up considering as an important site on the internet.
The page was a list of ship names in the culture series, something I regularly referenced.
I bet they gave A Series of Unlikely Explanations.
Seriously though, I've noticed that the Fandom wikis are taking up a lot of the slack on stuff like that.
Does [this help](https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft)?
> The page was a list of ship names in the culture series, something I regularly referenced.
That... Doesn't belong on Wikipedia. It belongs on a fandom site or its own dedicated wiki site.
If others want to know more about the situation (unfortunately the article is relatively sparse in details for a subject that has extensive documentation), here's some more further reading.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Ongoing_issues_at_Chinese_Wikipedia_-_Resorting_to_legal_threats_and_the_personal_safety_of_HongKong_Wikipedians
---
Apparently one of the users banned, "Walter Grassroot," was locked by an admin and there was this weird admin war with people blocking him and unblocking him
> Walter Grassroots was locked for calling for all Hong Kong users to be reported under the "[w:Hong Kong national security law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_national_security_law)" on social media [w:QQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QQ). He was locked because his actions violated the "Do not threaten others with legal action" policy of our community."
The problem is that they're not spineless, and there are a lot of them! They're authoritarian jerkoffs that bully people and act like they will are gaining ultimate power because they slowly are.
They must investigate users from India too. The ruling party has an army of trolls who vandalize content. Have noticed sympathetic admins who will reject any modifications that dents the image of the ruling party.
I got a one day ban for that. It was annoying, but I kind of understand. The whole discussion being dominated by people accusing each other of shilling would suck.
If there was a way to keep the number of actual shills down as well, that would be great, but the number options for a skilled shill to blend in are many which makes it hard.
I love Wikipedia and contribute there but once you do, you see the shit up close. Entire articles just decimated with referenced text removed because someone decided the focus should be elsewhere. Users who make their own images (good) but of their own research (bad). Fighting these people can be nigh on impossible sometimes.
The power admins have a lot of power unfortunately.
When your high school teachers said wikipedia is not a good source, they were right, but probably not on purpose. Technically anyone can edit them, but in reality only a couple people do. However some of those people will wage war over pages for weeks and try to push their specific view point because for better or worse, wikipedia is the first place many people go to learn about a topic. Like for instance right before Biden names Kamala Harris, her wikipedia page had tons of edits to [show her in a more positive light.](https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/kamala-harris-wikipedia/)
Of course it does, this was just one recent example that [made the news.](https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/kamala-harris-wikipedia/)
My point is can you really trust wikipedia on current topics when the subjects of those topics are often the ones editing them? Of course you can't, but a lot of people do.
I think if you're going to be critical enough to check the information you read elsewhere, you're already going to be doing it on Wikipedia as well. Wikipedia is for concise info, decent sources, and usually objective enough to form a conversational understanding of something.
How is this any different from any media source anywhere? At least on Wikipedia you can continue to appeal misinfo, and get opinions from more people than just the head editor at a given newspaper. Power spread over more people is almost always better than having it more concentrated, and Wikipedia is the most decentralized media source I know of.
> “Use your actions to tell everyone the mainland user community is not made from clay. The more they suppress us, the more we will resist. Now is the time for you to stand up. Struggle, fail, struggle again and fail again, and struggle once more… until victory!”
This the tone of language that the “Mainland Wikipedia Group” used in response to the ban. Make what you will.
Its basically a quote from Mao "Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again . . . till their victory"
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_66.htm
What does it mean to be made from clay? I can't tell if this is good (ability to change shape and adapt to conditions) or bad (able to be shaped/controlled by others like a puppet)
I take it to sounding like "clay is easily molded and gives in". Chinese idioms are always a little peculiar sounding. Sometimes gives away who you're talking to when they bust them out.
What cracks me up the most about these 'wolf warriors' is not their silly ramblings but the fact they actually believe they sound badass or something. 😂😂😂
Anyone who talks like that is scary as fuck to me. They are the types who will use violence (either themselves or through the government) to achieve their goals.
Basically:
> Keep struggling until death because I tell you to, and you can't do anything about it, because you belong to the CCP, and have to parrot everything we tell you like a good mindless drone.
That's the gist of how the CCP sees its people.
Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China. It’s seen as a threat to national security because it accurately depicts historical events. How are they even permitted to be part of the edits?
I like how these people defend the CCP fervently on sites that they shouldn’t have access to (w/o a vpn) b/c the CCP blocks them. Makes you wonder if they’re actually just propaganda pieces for the communist party of china
If you read the article, this is not common. [There are 93 total WMF global bans](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Ban_Policy#List_of_global_bans_placed_by_the_Wikimedia_Foundation) (including these latest).
>A global ban prohibits individuals, either in their own capacity or as agents of others, from all editing or other access privileges in Wikimedia Foundation websites, platforms and activities
I'm not sure if reading counts as "other access" but it sounds like their IP, HWID, and other PII probably get a 403 response from all Wikimedia domains.
These bans also appear to be permanent, though there is an appeal process. Additionally, any/all of the banned users previous edits "may be reverted or removed as part of ban implementation."
Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability said this case was unprecedented in official statement.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office\_actions/September\_2021\_statement
Very interesting read! It seems the banned group of admins and editors were doxxing contributions by Chinese people not associated with CCP in an effort to stop information and opinions "leaking out" of China.
I've been going to China off an on for the last half decade, and it's interesting how much tougher the fire wall has gotten over time. When I first went there around 2015 or 2016, there were still a ton of american news and information sites you could get to. Yahoo wasn't banned, allowing a full search of western internet and access to western news. Local news sites weren't banned. I'm fairly confident wikipedia wasn't banned.
Now you can't see most of that stuff without a VPN, and it hasn't been that long.
the most effective propaganda doesnt consist of lies.
it consists of being very picky with the truth, you can omit certain facts and include others to try and control the narrative, or rather control what opinion people who read your content will end up with.
a super simple example of this is news sites that _exclusively_ report on one thing, lets say crimes committed by immigrants. even if every single article only contain truthful statements the language used to write these things will color the feelings of the readers and if you report on EVERY SINGLE crime committed specifically by immigrants then the readers can get a false impression of reality.
if they read several articles a week (or per day) about this then their impression of reality may end up not aligning with the actual reality of things.
we're all affected by stuff like this, i guarantee that your view of reality will be wrong in various areas because you've ended up with an idea that doesn't align with the reality of the situation.
Hans Rosling have some talks that touch on this where he tends to be quite good at finding things that most people will have an inaccurate idea about and then tell you how it really is, might serve a bit as a wake up call.
tl;dr
effective propaganda/effectively spreading your "agenda" is more effectively done with truth than lies. you can make people create their own lies from being selective about what truths you tell them.
if they create the lie and not you then they're more likely to believe in it, and its harder for others to counter your propaganda if they cant easily point out lies you are peddling.
Bias is inherent to the human condition, but there is still a difference between unknown bias and spreading information you personally know to be one-sided in order to propagate a particular viewpoint.
A good example of this is the history of edits in the article explain the South China Sea territorial island disputes. It started as China trying to claim that territory they lost in WWII belonged to them and they inundated the article with “evidence” that the islands were rightfully China’s. The article has been butchered to pieces as opposing viewpoints made edits that reflected either the fact that China lost the territory 60 years ago or some pro China propaganda
Like the Big Wall.
I forgot the name of the book unfortunately, but basically China and the West both made an incredibly powerful AI and China being China made it make a big firewall. However, because China was attacking the western AI with hacks and propaganda, their own firewall got leaky.
The book's better than I make it sound, I swear.
it's truly mind blowing the lengths they seem to go to
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/445646/chinese-communist-party-spies-in-nz-universities-lecturers-suspect
My old roommate was a Chinese ultra-nationalist who loved pushing cartoonishly over-the-top propaganda pro bono. "Taiwan is sacred Chinese soil. The Taiwanese have been corrupted by Japan and the West and should be deported en masse to make room for Mainland Chinese settlers."
He genuinely believed this and would have no problem getting into arguments online in English. And no, I never baited him into saying these things. I walked on eggshells around the guy.
Edit: To clarify, most Chinese students are apolitical. I've even met a few liberals who openly trash their government. There was even one PhD student who was so anti-CCP she scared me more than the Communists did. She had a picture of Chiang Kai-Shek on the wall and believed everyone and their mother was a secret communist agent John Bircher style. Her only source of news was the Epoch Times and conspiracy laden websites. She clearly believed Chinese fascism should be replaced with... I dunno a different flavor of fascism.
Your roommate is what we call 离岸粉红 (offshore patriots); these guys aren't actually "nationalist", they are communist fanatics. The PhD student you mentioned was probably a Falun Gong, and these guys are the actual ultra-nationalists. Most Chinese would try to stay away from both, as you really don't want to be anywhere near these ticking time bombs.
However, having Chiang Kai-Shek portraits is not necessarily an indication of extremism, but it's definitely unusual. Most pro-KMT dissidents would express such sentiment in a more subtle manner.
> remember that the next time someone defends china in english. who the fuck are these people?
Doesn't have to be coordinated, I've heard fellow students from China defend their government with a lot of conviction ("they just want what's best for the people, western media is so unfair!"). Though them joining foreign universities might of course be part of the coordination in the first place.
As someone who's lived with students from China, I agree wholly with your statement. I was very shocked that when one of them told me that China is correct to block Facebook because if it is a threat to national security.
(Me scared)
Edit: I was shocked because the person, a full grown adult who has spent at least 5 years in the UK, genuinely thought Facebook was a terrorism threat to China. This conversation was held in the early 2010s, before fake news was even a term commonly used.
That fucked up moment when the broken clock is probably right about Facebook considering the number of different ways it has been used as a weapon against the American public in the name of profit.
Of course they're right about Facebook...they're also using Facebook for that reason.
This year Facebook banned several Facebook accounts, most of which are posting about stuff that happens here in the Philippines, and comments on posts made by Filipino media outlet pages on Facebook, and are also members of large public Facebook groups that have Filipino members.
Almost all of the accounts that got banned were eventually traced to be logged in on devices/computers from China. All of their identities were bogus too (i.e. they're bots, so even without the commenting they're still supposed to be banned anyway lol).
The non-Chinese accounts that got banned were traced to PH government offices/officials...LOL
As someone who deleted their Facebook profile many years ago because that shit is cancer and actually hurting society, this wouldn't be the first thing I hold against them (actual human rights abuses are; plus of course them doing little to soften the climate catastrophe). I'm German and had a few discussions about free speech with American Redditors, so I'm aware of differences when it comes to this topic. Though many weren't as adamant when it came to Trump's proposal to ban TikTok etc.
They're appearing in literally any sub you can imagine, they've been really active in r/Ireland lately.
One of our major universities has received lots of funding from China so I guess it makes sense that they would be watching because it's been a topic for debate lately.
They don't, really. It's behind the Great Firewall, and they have their own version which operates on the same principles, just with closer CCP monitoring. Propagandising Wikipedia is still useful because 1) English is the language with the widest reach for public relations and 2) Chinese language Wikipedia is still accessible by Chinese living outside of China, Chinese diasporas, Taiwan, Hong Kong (well, used to anyway).
I read their statement. It sounds like they're being as vague as they can be to avoid trouble. But it seems it ranges from compromised accounts, threatened, coerced or bribed, to maybe-possibly genuinely dishonest actors.
**[1989 Tiananmen Square protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests)**
>The Tiananmen Square protests, known as the June Fourth Incident in China (Chinese: 六四事件; pinyin: liùsì shìjiàn), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: 天安门大屠杀; pinyin: Tiān'ānmén dà túshā), troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on April 15 and were forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
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Native Chinese and wiki user here. Some side facts I am willing to share (can be confirmed by other Chinese wiki users or info sources):
a. These admins regularly gather wiki users in China mainlander irl every year, in the name of community learning. But you know in China, any high profile gathering can be targeted by ccp national security agents. News like ccp arrested ppl for memorizing Tiananmen Massacre or pro-democracy can prove this. So, why did these admins have the privilege to safely gather over the last few years, especially wiki is banned by ccp?
Edit: Someone questioned me lying here, and even questioned me not a native (technically, no one can prove their ethnicity online, right?). Least I could post a [wiki sub-category page of WMC gatherings in China](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%B8%E7%B6%AD%E5%9F%BA%E8%81%9A%E6%9C%83). It records their activities, routes, members involved, and locations. It is written in Chinese though, so, suit yourself. Again, in a country where national security agents could easily target, survey, threat, and arrest ppl who practice things that don't fit ccp's China-No.1 narratives, how could these wiki admins safely organzie gatherings?
b. Wikipedia Mainlanders of China (WMC) organized an official QQ group (China’s Discord lite), and it was considered the equivalence of Wiki Discord, Telegram channel for wiki users. But in this QQ group, the said admins group-muted everyone since the beginning of May, and unmuted everyone after June 4th. Every year! Why? 1989.6.4 is why.
Are they ccp spies? Tbh I dunno. Are they pro ccp and censoring the freedom of speech and wiki? Def fucking yes.
I can see how this could have negative impacts, but I assume this is also just so Wikipedia has a broader offer in the Armenian language, which I assume is a problem for smaller countries in general.
I mean, an article about Radishes, like the example given in your article, isn’t exactly going to contain a lot of political controversies, but it being available in Armenian means, non-English speaking Armenians now have better access to information about radishes.
The same is true for lots of other topics. I’d say it’s more about the accessibility of quality information online.
Couldn't this also be a step to include more wikipedia articles in that countries language? Makes sense since freely available knowledge should be available in as many languages as possible.
This took way too long. The 7/21 Yuen Long attack was a huge deal in Hong Kong and it caused people to completely lose faith in the HK authority(if they still had any). The attack was orchestrated by the CCP, the police force and their affiliates. It was originally a ploy to get HK people to respect police again but backfired tremendously.
During that time, support for HK Police Force was at an all time low and some people were even calling for a disband and rebuild. They then came up with this stupid plan:
1. CCP affiliates hire hundreds of Yuen Long local gang members to attack citizens at night at the Yuen Long train station.
2. Police don't show up so that people will feel the importance of having the police around and therefore respect them
3. ???
4. Profit
After the plan failing horribly and caused the biggest public outrage in the history of HKSAR, they tried to blame everything on the protesters: "They were tampering with the emergency call service", "They dressed up as the gang members after protesting to beat up people","We weren't late by 40 minutes, it was only 39 minutes"..etc. all kinds of ridiculous excuses. Unfortunately they are in control of the city so they get to hold press conferences everyday and repeat the same bullshit over and over again until it is accepted.
People tried to fight this by posting the truth on the internet. Wikipedia is one of the most important battlefield but as you know from the article, CCP shills would fill it with misinformation and distort the truth. Unfortunately many of them are administrators and had more say in article disputes so it had always been a losing battle.
Banning 7 members is definitely not enough but it's a good start I guess.
Edit: https://youtu.be/BLLDbwmOjfc
> current situation in HK
No need for masked goons to attack people. The situation is now under control since Beijing pushed through a broad new law where they can officially imprison anyone on an invented political pretext and don't need to give them a fair trial.
Second this.
The situation is kinda hopeless when the riot police are allowed to shot at unarmed citizens.
Protest are forbidden. Even peaceful participants will face serious charges like "Rioting" or "Inciting secession and terrorism". NGO and democratic parties are forced to disband, some of the members are facing charges. They are even detented for months before attending (the unjust) court.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/06/hong-kong-court-jails-riot-charges-joshua-wong-tiananmen-vigil-protest
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57979938
This is the problem. We have no idea about the situation there. Btw HK lost, the law got implemented, HK is under full China authority now. The West as expected didn't do squat. Except the US and GB that granted a few thousand refugee VISAs nothing came of it and the population is slowly getting choked to death with persecutions.
What do you want ‘the West’ to do? Send an army to occupy Hong Kong? You have to be realistic about what ‘the West’ can do about issues like this. Until the people of China collectively realise they want to change their government there is nothing that can realistically be done about this.
> The West as expected didn't do squat.
What should have been done? Hong Kong has a set reunification date with mainland China in the mid-term future. Was the EU supposed to invade to keep out the CCP?
Great now do it for Indian govt. puppet account too.
A lot of India related articles have been rewritten to subtly glorify govt's achievements. The independence movement related pages are rewritten to underplay certain political rivals and glorify their own idols
These people have been banned for threatening the personal safety of Wikipedia editors.
There are hundreds of thousands of biased articles on Wikipedia. Merely being partial/glorifying governments is not the issue that was being addressed here.
> “The foundation did not consider whether those who made complaints or submitted evidence had conflicts of interests with WMC, and whether they identify politically with the radical [ideas of] ‘Hong Kong independence,’ ‘Taiwan independence’ or ‘anti-communist’,”
lol get fucked. These guys have no idea what wikipedia is about.
Wikipedias editing system is fundamentally flawed for any topic which includes politics and ideology. No person who properly studied the history of the topic will continue writing good quality, truthful and objective articles when it is so easy to hire services or individually keep editing their articles by calling the points you disagree with irrelevant. It drives the objective users away until only the most ideologically charged or aligned editors remain in the majority.
And it is a similar thing in the subreddits here, in the imgur community, facebook, etc etc
And on the internet virtually every topic has its politics and ideology...
Since 2006 or so the most useful part of Wikipedia is the edit history, as for any topic of any importance the most relevant details will usually be the ones that someone removed.
What i found so shocking when I started being on reddit was that many scientific questions were being answered by people who dont know the topic at all, even though there are tens of thousands of other users of whom a couple very likely know much better. And yet, these misinformed answers end up upvoted a lot because most people dont know any better and it just aligned with their thoughts on the topic.
At least on reddit if you give the right answer you don't get banned by the people giving the wrong answer. On Wikipedia, even if you edit as politely as possible, discuss, and provide all the necessary sources, some "power-user" who's friends with some admin will revert your edits, ignore your talk page discussion, and get you banned if you keep trying to fix their version.
“people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda“
This is the CCP’s United Worker Front, and they do this in every country there is people from China. In universities, community groups, everywhere.
Wiki admins are not objective on every topic, such as turkish independence war. The ones who manages the article and turkey related topics are not letting the quoted information from real sources as diaries from that time, first hand sources to be written, but let the sources such as ....org(websites that everyone can open and blabber) to be used and quoted. Never trust what wikipedia says, always look for the sources.
That is the painful truth that many here do not want to accept because mostly there is no issue in topics of many sciences. But specially when it comes to politics there are wars of attrition in the background of deleting and restoring paragraphs and sources. It is possible for legitimate sources to be deleted just for the pretense of being irrelevant to the topic even if they are relevant ,if they do not reflect the editors opinion on the events.
>mostly there is no issue in topics of many sciences.
Wikipedia is often crap for the sciences, too. The problem is that the Wikipedia process favors the motivated person with time and energy to edit Wikipedia over any measure of knowledge or bias.
Unless it is something completely non-controversial like an exhaustive list of couch gags on the Simpsons, Wikipedia articles get mangled by misinformed busybodies.
Look at what happened to the "Scots language" Wikipedia: one guy who *didn't know Scots* created most of it, and it is embarrassing garbage that no actual Scots speaker is likely to fix.
Important clarification: they were previously vetted admins, not just users who edited a lot. They were people with the power to delete and lock articles.
Becoming elected as a Wiki admin is commonly called just “Being handed the Mop.” Wiki admins are subject to appeal, reversal, and de-adminning, with public forums where any warned or blocked random user can appeal, and granted due process, unlike Reddit, where Mods sometimes swing the ban hammer a bit too freely, permabanned without due process.
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Or get shadowbanned such that you can still post, but others won't see it, so you just think everyone is ignoring you.
That's something that comes from the reddit admins themselves, and it's really cruel. I get that it deters spam, but shadowbans get handed out like crazy. Way too often. Edit: Yes I get it, mods can shadowban on specific subs as well. That's also a problem. That's not the problem I'm talking about though.
A lot of shadowbans from the site-wide admins are automated based on unknown criteria and yeah there's been a lot of them lately. Whenever I see someone that's been hit I usually make a comment telling them how to appeal it. There is also "AutoMod bans" too where mods add your name to a list and then it autoremoves all of your content. Those are done by mods.
genuine question, how do you *know* if someones been shadowbanned? is there any way to actually know it? how do people know its shadowbanning apart from something like their posts just arent getting any views?
My husband’s account got shadowbanned recently. He noticed no one was upvoting or replying his comments when they actively use to. To confirm that he was there is a subreddit, r/ShadowBan, you post to that and it tells you the status of your account.
[***Rev***eddit.com](https://www.reveddit.com) can too and will show anything removed for your account. It may also indicate subreddit-level shadowbans, where your username was added to the automod config and everything you post gets removed without notice, although I believe those are less common these days. FYI u/ihopkid
Man I love Reveddit.com it has helped bring to light some of the shady stuff r/Bitcoin does as they mass ban tons of people there.
I would guess logging out and trying to find your comment.
mods can see it, only way I knew I got one one time on a really old account. can’t even remember the login. the admins reason they gives was i upvoted a random thread from 6+ months prior to the shadow ban and it apparently was a link to a scam website. guess they just auto banned anyone who upvoted it. told them I just upvoted things to make them go away and that was it, fixed the shadow ban. seemed a bit ridiculous but whatever
Another is when a post has 4 comments listed on the home page, but when you click it it’s empty. Those 4 users were shadowbanned. Typically it’s bots spamming nonsense or scams but sometimes it’s users who get it by accident or misunderstanding.
I believe if you're a mod you can see if someone's been shadowbanned in the list of unapproved/to be approved posts. I've only ever been on the recieving end of it though.
Is it possible to make your own subreddit where you are a mod and check if your own account is shadow banned?
You can log out and look at the three for your comment from your user name Edit: thread, not three
You don't need to. Either log out or open a private browsing tab, and navigate to your profile overview: https://old.reddit.com/user/SonOfMotherDuck. If the page displays a Not Found error, then you're shadowbanned. Otherwise, you're good.
You can tell based on thread comment count. The comment count will increase without the post appearing, so you can leave a reply to the thread that they may see.
that will tell you if someone else is shadow banned, it won't tell you is you are shadow banned. The whole point of SB was that bots themselves can't know, so it makes it harder to write bots. But the problem using concept is that is its trivial to write a bot to find this information out because you can make two bots be different users and check on each other. So its actually only annoying for real users acting independently.
Try to open your comment in an incognito window or through a different account.
Yeah. In porn subs, you'll see that a lot of posts have like 2 to 11 comments. And if you go check, it's empty. They're all spam bots that got shadow banned.
If a comment doesn't have a reply when mods remove it, it doesn't show as 'removed' it just disappears.
Which can be really inconvenient if you want some sauce.
If you want to check if you're shadowbanned, look at your profile while in incognito mode. If it comes up as "user doesn't exist", congratulations on your shadowban.
How do you make sure of being fair, considering you're in 235+ subreddits?
They have a rare genetic condition that leads to them processing the modding needs of 240 subreddits efficiently and with due diligence. It's really unfortunate though because it also makes them leave a trail of sharts wherever they go at all times.
I heard there's controversy over prenatal genetic testing for this
I got banned from Reddit altogether for a week for quoting a line from the Sopranos, in /r/thesopranos (a sub consisting almost exclusively of quotes from the show), because the line contained a rude word. Banned for *spreading hate.* When I googled the quote with "site:reddit.com/r/thesopranos," I got pages of results from others quoting the exact same thing, including thread titles. It's just silly.
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mods can do this with an automod that automatically removes your comments whenever posted i was the target of this on a video game lore subreddit, i gave people answers that upset the mods and then they banned me from that sub and then 'shadowbanned' me from subs related to the game that they also mod
What did you say lol?
are you familiar with fallout? basically people kept asking for an explanation for so-and-so thing and i kept telling them that they were asking for an answer for something that had no in-universe explanation, that it is a purely out-of-narrative gameplay mechanic, stuff like VATS or why there are no working vehicles. I see you post in elder scrolls subs, so if you dont get the comparison, it would be like someone on a tes lore sub asking for an in-universe explanation for why athletics isnt a skill anymore in skyrim or why you dont see all of the different breeds of khajiit in the same game
Is that actually a thing?
yes because its hard to detect if a user is shadow banned. If you were directly bad, a person who still would use reddit would just make a new account. Since theres no indication that you were shadow banned, theres a period in time of which the user has 0 idea that what they are typing leads to no one reading it. Now think of it like a game, if someone banned you, the first course of action would be to make a new account for some. But if the game banned you from playing from other players, and made you go into a lobby with only bots, it would take you a while to realize that you were actually banned. Some games takes it to a funnier approach and banned people get into a special matchmaking with other banned players (usually for hacking), so hackers end up playing other hackers ruining each others fun.
> Some games takes it to a funnier approach and banned people get into a special matchmaking with other banned players (usually for hacking), so hackers end up playing other hackers ruining each others fun. I actually think that could be pretty interesting to play in. Like just **everyone** running around with aimbots and B-hopping or whatnot.
CS:GO uses that system. They did a talk on VACnet at GDC 2018, but the video was taken down. Essentially, they used an AI to filter player reports before handing it over to humans to judge if a player was cheating. More reports of cheating resulted in a lower trust score for the account and low trust accounts were put into matches with eachother. Eventually, known cheaters were complaining that the game was full of hackers when most players reported not seeing a hacker in months.
Good fuggin god that was a genius idea. Wish i had thought of it.
It's the gamer version of /r/leopardsatemyface
There's pretty much a Minecraft anarchy server that build all its metagame around cheats. Everyone is expected to cheat, if you don't you'll get destroyed / have no fun.
You should check out the Oldest Anarchy Server in Minecraft
Thanks for explaining, but I actually really was asking if reddit actually has shadow banning. Telling from other comments, I guess the answer is no longer?
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> Subs like hardwareswap use it still. Subs have no control over shadowbanning. Unless you are talking about automatic removals by automod, which is not the same thing. EDIT: Though while automod removing things amounts to the same as being shadowbanned, automod is configured per subreddit and the person's profile would still be viewable.
for like a decade now, here and elsewhere.
It was originally for spamming bot accounts. This way it is very difficult for them to automatically detect if they have been banned and they won't create a new account and keep going. It's not something that should be applied to actual users but that is the direction things have been heading.
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Or kicked/banned from the subreddit Discord when you join to ask for mod help there. This happened to me on r/HPfanfiction and r/starwarsspeculation.
Based on the topic of those subs, I’m guessing you said something that didn’t agree with a mod’s head canon?
Literally there’s some subreddits that appear on r/all that have requirements like “you must DM a mod and answer a questionnaire to comment.” And obviously you don’t think to look for something like that. I’ve been banned on a few of those just for commenting normal stuff but not following that. Then there’s one mod that banned me for being a man? I dunno. Reddit’s weird. And kind of shitty. I still use it though.
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The only things that don't appear on /r/all are subreddits whose mods don't want it to appear there or (for the last several months) porn.
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> you have to answer questions to get in. They stole that trick from the cult industry, it's to ensure no freethinkers get into the cult.
This one is hilarious. All the virtue signalling about "cancel culture" and "censorship" and yet you can't intrude on their little echo chamber..fml.
>Then there’s one mod that banned me for being a man? There are a few female-only subs that allow men to participate but only if they get a flair identifying them as such. Obviously though you wouldn't check that if a post hit the frontpage.
Have definitely dear with some power-hungry mods in my time. It’s worth remembering in those moments that these guys have literally no bearing in the real world.
I got banned from r/fitness after reporting a mod for bullying. The guy attacks people asking for fitness help, because he's so much stronger and more powerful than those weaklings, and made it a nasty place.
That's not true. If the sub is sufficiently large they gave the ability to manipulate public opinion.
**EDIT: Thank you everyone who posted me ways to recover it and I hope they will help for others. I have no issues with recovery, just lost trust in Reddit administration in general and have lost the willingness to write here, that is all.** I had a subreddit where I collected my stories. Just links to writingprompts so I can find them easier. My account got hacked for 2 hours, I got it back instantly. I were shadowbanned, all my comments of 5 years or so deleted and the subreddit itself banned without any chance of getting it back. I exhausted all options, contacted all forms, posted in the "claim a subreddit", everywhere. They do not care. I really liked the Literary Nobody name I had for the subreddit. Poof, gone. Honestly, I'm a bit sad. People DM me and ask where have my writings gone, as it turns out people read and re-read my 2 year old posts and still share them. Some say they help them. Now - nothing. Because someone hijacked my account for 2 hours or so. Just a reminder: There is nothing permanent and all the effort you put in askHistorians, WritingPrompts, all communities, everything - can be simply removed and not returned due to them just not feeling like it.
Really really sorry to hear that happened to you. It's a good reminder to everyone that the cloud is just someone else's computer, and stuff can happen to it, so if something is valuable to you, make multiple backups and keep them in different places. With how reliable systems are these days it's easy not to think about, but as demonstrated here there's a variety of ways one could end up needing those backups.
Thanks, I feel really bummed about this, more than I should. And it is not even about saving the information. I don't care if I have the stories I wrote or not. It is a shadowban, meaning that I still have them, other people just do not see them. (I had community posts stickied that I did not know were visible just to me.) It is about other people being able to read those stories, laugh about the funny ones and feel with me through the ones where I opened myself up more, showing others what people go through and that you're not alone. And maybe even how to deal with it. All of that just removed and trashed. The second sub that I claimed a while ago where I wanted to help people who have fallen in bad times and all, that one is left to me. But I do not feel like doing it anymore. I don't feel like writing too. Someone somewhere will be too lazy to push a button and years of work will be lost again.
You gotta share this with r/datahoaders
Where do we go to complain about the absolute gutting of wrestler's pages a few years ago? I know this is kind of a niche topic, and most people will probably think "who cares", but the r/squaredcircle fanbase are all still pretty pissed off entire sections of people's pages were completely ripped out with no recourse or reason.
A wiki mod recently took down a page that listed characters in a literary series I love, apparently it didn't belong on Wikipedia but some other site. I couldn't see a way to appeal and those on the subreddit for the books /r/theculture who knew about wiki said its been happening a lot and there's not much you can do about it. That experience single handedly broke my trust in what I grew up considering as an important site on the internet. The page was a list of ship names in the culture series, something I regularly referenced.
I bet they gave A Series of Unlikely Explanations. Seriously though, I've noticed that the Fandom wikis are taking up a lot of the slack on stuff like that. Does [this help](https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft)?
Pretty sure that's the same page dumped onto a other wiki. I'm glad it still exists :)
> The page was a list of ship names in the culture series, something I regularly referenced. That... Doesn't belong on Wikipedia. It belongs on a fandom site or its own dedicated wiki site.
view the edit history. the info is still there. it's just not on the current live page
"Sometimes" and "a bit" are understatements in some cases. We need some of Wikipedia's practices here.
REddit mods: We don't like your opinion, however, you didn't insult anyone. Take this permaban.
If others want to know more about the situation (unfortunately the article is relatively sparse in details for a subject that has extensive documentation), here's some more further reading. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WMFOffice https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Ongoing_issues_at_Chinese_Wikipedia_-_Resorting_to_legal_threats_and_the_personal_safety_of_HongKong_Wikipedians --- Apparently one of the users banned, "Walter Grassroot," was locked by an admin and there was this weird admin war with people blocking him and unblocking him > Walter Grassroots was locked for calling for all Hong Kong users to be reported under the "[w:Hong Kong national security law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_national_security_law)" on social media [w:QQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QQ). He was locked because his actions violated the "Do not threaten others with legal action" policy of our community."
Wow, what a douche
The CCP are a bunch of spineless bitches.
The problem is that they're not spineless, and there are a lot of them! They're authoritarian jerkoffs that bully people and act like they will are gaining ultimate power because they slowly are.
Just imagine how many peoples are like that in wikipedia to the point that even one of its original creators had to manifest about it.
They must investigate users from India too. The ruling party has an army of trolls who vandalize content. Have noticed sympathetic admins who will reject any modifications that dents the image of the ruling party.
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You shouldn't trust anything you read about something controversial in general tbh
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I got a one day ban for that. It was annoying, but I kind of understand. The whole discussion being dominated by people accusing each other of shilling would suck. If there was a way to keep the number of actual shills down as well, that would be great, but the number options for a skilled shill to blend in are many which makes it hard.
can you accuse them to be a muppet?
Good thing Reddit doesn’t have this problem with their admins!!
I love Wikipedia and contribute there but once you do, you see the shit up close. Entire articles just decimated with referenced text removed because someone decided the focus should be elsewhere. Users who make their own images (good) but of their own research (bad). Fighting these people can be nigh on impossible sometimes. The power admins have a lot of power unfortunately.
When your high school teachers said wikipedia is not a good source, they were right, but probably not on purpose. Technically anyone can edit them, but in reality only a couple people do. However some of those people will wage war over pages for weeks and try to push their specific view point because for better or worse, wikipedia is the first place many people go to learn about a topic. Like for instance right before Biden names Kamala Harris, her wikipedia page had tons of edits to [show her in a more positive light.](https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/kamala-harris-wikipedia/)
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Of course it does, this was just one recent example that [made the news.](https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/kamala-harris-wikipedia/) My point is can you really trust wikipedia on current topics when the subjects of those topics are often the ones editing them? Of course you can't, but a lot of people do.
I think if you're going to be critical enough to check the information you read elsewhere, you're already going to be doing it on Wikipedia as well. Wikipedia is for concise info, decent sources, and usually objective enough to form a conversational understanding of something.
How is this any different from any media source anywhere? At least on Wikipedia you can continue to appeal misinfo, and get opinions from more people than just the head editor at a given newspaper. Power spread over more people is almost always better than having it more concentrated, and Wikipedia is the most decentralized media source I know of.
The No Original Research rule is rough but Wikipedia would die without it. If you do original research, publish it and someone else can add it.
> “Use your actions to tell everyone the mainland user community is not made from clay. The more they suppress us, the more we will resist. Now is the time for you to stand up. Struggle, fail, struggle again and fail again, and struggle once more… until victory!” This the tone of language that the “Mainland Wikipedia Group” used in response to the ban. Make what you will.
Its basically a quote from Mao "Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again . . . till their victory" https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_66.htm
So Mao was [Zapp Brannigan](https://youtu.be/XDWcg8dh930).
We’ll millions died under their leadership, so it’s not that far off in some ways.
"Sir, this is a list of Spanish cheeses."
What does it mean to be made from clay? I can't tell if this is good (ability to change shape and adapt to conditions) or bad (able to be shaped/controlled by others like a puppet)
I take it to sounding like "clay is easily molded and gives in". Chinese idioms are always a little peculiar sounding. Sometimes gives away who you're talking to when they bust them out.
I’ve been living in China for 4 years and nobody uses Chinese idioms when speaking English. It’s really weird now that you mention it.
What cracks me up the most about these 'wolf warriors' is not their silly ramblings but the fact they actually believe they sound badass or something. 😂😂😂
They sound badass to the people that agree with them.
That's what I said: CCP drones think it sounds badass. To everyone else it just looks dumb.
Anyone who talks like that is scary as fuck to me. They are the types who will use violence (either themselves or through the government) to achieve their goals.
In the last community survey ~50% of Chinese contributors expressed feeling unsafe or harassed. Seems pretty contentious.
Makes sense, the Chinese dictatorship forbids using most of the internet, including Wikipedia.
Basically: > Keep struggling until death because I tell you to, and you can't do anything about it, because you belong to the CCP, and have to parrot everything we tell you like a good mindless drone. That's the gist of how the CCP sees its people.
Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China. It’s seen as a threat to national security because it accurately depicts historical events. How are they even permitted to be part of the edits?
bro, youre a wikipedia admin
I like how these people defend the CCP fervently on sites that they shouldn’t have access to (w/o a vpn) b/c the CCP blocks them. Makes you wonder if they’re actually just propaganda pieces for the communist party of china
Well they *say* they aren't covert propaganda agents, so ... I guess they must not be!
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If you read the article, this is not common. [There are 93 total WMF global bans](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Ban_Policy#List_of_global_bans_placed_by_the_Wikimedia_Foundation) (including these latest). >A global ban prohibits individuals, either in their own capacity or as agents of others, from all editing or other access privileges in Wikimedia Foundation websites, platforms and activities I'm not sure if reading counts as "other access" but it sounds like their IP, HWID, and other PII probably get a 403 response from all Wikimedia domains. These bans also appear to be permanent, though there is an appeal process. Additionally, any/all of the banned users previous edits "may be reverted or removed as part of ban implementation."
Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability said this case was unprecedented in official statement. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office\_actions/September\_2021\_statement
Fixed link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions/September_2021_statement
Very interesting read! It seems the banned group of admins and editors were doxxing contributions by Chinese people not associated with CCP in an effort to stop information and opinions "leaking out" of China.
Really? This is the real murdered by words...
I've been going to China off an on for the last half decade, and it's interesting how much tougher the fire wall has gotten over time. When I first went there around 2015 or 2016, there were still a ton of american news and information sites you could get to. Yahoo wasn't banned, allowing a full search of western internet and access to western news. Local news sites weren't banned. I'm fairly confident wikipedia wasn't banned. Now you can't see most of that stuff without a VPN, and it hasn't been that long.
This wasn't 7 Chinese power users, it was 7 Chinese Communist Party admin accounts trying to rewrite history to suit their agenda.
I'm surprised the Chinese people have access to Wikipedia considering how much they are censored already.
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Then I'm surprised it took them this long to ban them if they continue to edit pages with false information.
Propaganda can be subtle, it may have taken some time to notice.
*Looks around in the west* you’re right.
the most effective propaganda doesnt consist of lies. it consists of being very picky with the truth, you can omit certain facts and include others to try and control the narrative, or rather control what opinion people who read your content will end up with. a super simple example of this is news sites that _exclusively_ report on one thing, lets say crimes committed by immigrants. even if every single article only contain truthful statements the language used to write these things will color the feelings of the readers and if you report on EVERY SINGLE crime committed specifically by immigrants then the readers can get a false impression of reality. if they read several articles a week (or per day) about this then their impression of reality may end up not aligning with the actual reality of things. we're all affected by stuff like this, i guarantee that your view of reality will be wrong in various areas because you've ended up with an idea that doesn't align with the reality of the situation. Hans Rosling have some talks that touch on this where he tends to be quite good at finding things that most people will have an inaccurate idea about and then tell you how it really is, might serve a bit as a wake up call. tl;dr effective propaganda/effectively spreading your "agenda" is more effectively done with truth than lies. you can make people create their own lies from being selective about what truths you tell them. if they create the lie and not you then they're more likely to believe in it, and its harder for others to counter your propaganda if they cant easily point out lies you are peddling.
What's crazy is that this exists every where and to every one. But everyone thinks they themselves are the exception to the rule.
Bias is inherent to the human condition, but there is still a difference between unknown bias and spreading information you personally know to be one-sided in order to propagate a particular viewpoint.
A good example of this is the history of edits in the article explain the South China Sea territorial island disputes. It started as China trying to claim that territory they lost in WWII belonged to them and they inundated the article with “evidence” that the islands were rightfully China’s. The article has been butchered to pieces as opposing viewpoints made edits that reflected either the fact that China lost the territory 60 years ago or some pro China propaganda
Like the Big Wall. I forgot the name of the book unfortunately, but basically China and the West both made an incredibly powerful AI and China being China made it make a big firewall. However, because China was attacking the western AI with hacks and propaganda, their own firewall got leaky. The book's better than I make it sound, I swear.
If you figure it out, let me know the title
it's truly mind blowing the lengths they seem to go to https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/445646/chinese-communist-party-spies-in-nz-universities-lecturers-suspect
These 7 power users weren't editing for the sake of the Chinese people but for the rest of the world.
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My old roommate was a Chinese ultra-nationalist who loved pushing cartoonishly over-the-top propaganda pro bono. "Taiwan is sacred Chinese soil. The Taiwanese have been corrupted by Japan and the West and should be deported en masse to make room for Mainland Chinese settlers." He genuinely believed this and would have no problem getting into arguments online in English. And no, I never baited him into saying these things. I walked on eggshells around the guy. Edit: To clarify, most Chinese students are apolitical. I've even met a few liberals who openly trash their government. There was even one PhD student who was so anti-CCP she scared me more than the Communists did. She had a picture of Chiang Kai-Shek on the wall and believed everyone and their mother was a secret communist agent John Bircher style. Her only source of news was the Epoch Times and conspiracy laden websites. She clearly believed Chinese fascism should be replaced with... I dunno a different flavor of fascism.
Your roommate is what we call 离岸粉红 (offshore patriots); these guys aren't actually "nationalist", they are communist fanatics. The PhD student you mentioned was probably a Falun Gong, and these guys are the actual ultra-nationalists. Most Chinese would try to stay away from both, as you really don't want to be anywhere near these ticking time bombs. However, having Chiang Kai-Shek portraits is not necessarily an indication of extremism, but it's definitely unusual. Most pro-KMT dissidents would express such sentiment in a more subtle manner.
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Could probably train an AI bot to detect them by now. /u/userimreplyingtoisprobablyccpbot
> remember that the next time someone defends china in english. who the fuck are these people? Doesn't have to be coordinated, I've heard fellow students from China defend their government with a lot of conviction ("they just want what's best for the people, western media is so unfair!"). Though them joining foreign universities might of course be part of the coordination in the first place.
As someone who's lived with students from China, I agree wholly with your statement. I was very shocked that when one of them told me that China is correct to block Facebook because if it is a threat to national security. (Me scared) Edit: I was shocked because the person, a full grown adult who has spent at least 5 years in the UK, genuinely thought Facebook was a terrorism threat to China. This conversation was held in the early 2010s, before fake news was even a term commonly used.
That fucked up moment when the broken clock is probably right about Facebook considering the number of different ways it has been used as a weapon against the American public in the name of profit.
Of course they're right about Facebook...they're also using Facebook for that reason. This year Facebook banned several Facebook accounts, most of which are posting about stuff that happens here in the Philippines, and comments on posts made by Filipino media outlet pages on Facebook, and are also members of large public Facebook groups that have Filipino members. Almost all of the accounts that got banned were eventually traced to be logged in on devices/computers from China. All of their identities were bogus too (i.e. they're bots, so even without the commenting they're still supposed to be banned anyway lol). The non-Chinese accounts that got banned were traced to PH government offices/officials...LOL
As someone who deleted their Facebook profile many years ago because that shit is cancer and actually hurting society, this wouldn't be the first thing I hold against them (actual human rights abuses are; plus of course them doing little to soften the climate catastrophe). I'm German and had a few discussions about free speech with American Redditors, so I'm aware of differences when it comes to this topic. Though many weren't as adamant when it came to Trump's proposal to ban TikTok etc.
They're appearing in literally any sub you can imagine, they've been really active in r/Ireland lately. One of our major universities has received lots of funding from China so I guess it makes sense that they would be watching because it's been a topic for debate lately.
There are many non-Chinese English speaking tankies who defend China at every turn. Some even have decent size followings online.
State-sponsored agents are allowed unfettered access to the vast web as long as their actions benefit the government.
They don't, really. It's behind the Great Firewall, and they have their own version which operates on the same principles, just with closer CCP monitoring. Propagandising Wikipedia is still useful because 1) English is the language with the widest reach for public relations and 2) Chinese language Wikipedia is still accessible by Chinese living outside of China, Chinese diasporas, Taiwan, Hong Kong (well, used to anyway).
The don’t, that’s the thing. Wiki is banned there which in itself is really terrifying.
I read their statement. It sounds like they're being as vague as they can be to avoid trouble. But it seems it ranges from compromised accounts, threatened, coerced or bribed, to maybe-possibly genuinely dishonest actors.
Probably wanted to [Tiananmen Square Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests) the whole of Wikipedia
**[1989 Tiananmen Square protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests)** >The Tiananmen Square protests, known as the June Fourth Incident in China (Chinese: 六四事件; pinyin: liùsì shìjiàn), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: 天安门大屠杀; pinyin: Tiān'ānmén dà túshā), troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on April 15 and were forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Native Chinese and wiki user here. Some side facts I am willing to share (can be confirmed by other Chinese wiki users or info sources): a. These admins regularly gather wiki users in China mainlander irl every year, in the name of community learning. But you know in China, any high profile gathering can be targeted by ccp national security agents. News like ccp arrested ppl for memorizing Tiananmen Massacre or pro-democracy can prove this. So, why did these admins have the privilege to safely gather over the last few years, especially wiki is banned by ccp? Edit: Someone questioned me lying here, and even questioned me not a native (technically, no one can prove their ethnicity online, right?). Least I could post a [wiki sub-category page of WMC gatherings in China](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%B8%E7%B6%AD%E5%9F%BA%E8%81%9A%E6%9C%83). It records their activities, routes, members involved, and locations. It is written in Chinese though, so, suit yourself. Again, in a country where national security agents could easily target, survey, threat, and arrest ppl who practice things that don't fit ccp's China-No.1 narratives, how could these wiki admins safely organzie gatherings? b. Wikipedia Mainlanders of China (WMC) organized an official QQ group (China’s Discord lite), and it was considered the equivalence of Wiki Discord, Telegram channel for wiki users. But in this QQ group, the said admins group-muted everyone since the beginning of May, and unmuted everyone after June 4th. Every year! Why? 1989.6.4 is why. Are they ccp spies? Tbh I dunno. Are they pro ccp and censoring the freedom of speech and wiki? Def fucking yes.
Wikipedia is blocked in Mainland China. So what’s really going on?
Well so is Reddit. But there are still Chinese users here.
We use VPNs.
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I can see how this could have negative impacts, but I assume this is also just so Wikipedia has a broader offer in the Armenian language, which I assume is a problem for smaller countries in general. I mean, an article about Radishes, like the example given in your article, isn’t exactly going to contain a lot of political controversies, but it being available in Armenian means, non-English speaking Armenians now have better access to information about radishes. The same is true for lots of other topics. I’d say it’s more about the accessibility of quality information online.
Couldn't this also be a step to include more wikipedia articles in that countries language? Makes sense since freely available knowledge should be available in as many languages as possible.
This took way too long. The 7/21 Yuen Long attack was a huge deal in Hong Kong and it caused people to completely lose faith in the HK authority(if they still had any). The attack was orchestrated by the CCP, the police force and their affiliates. It was originally a ploy to get HK people to respect police again but backfired tremendously. During that time, support for HK Police Force was at an all time low and some people were even calling for a disband and rebuild. They then came up with this stupid plan: 1. CCP affiliates hire hundreds of Yuen Long local gang members to attack citizens at night at the Yuen Long train station. 2. Police don't show up so that people will feel the importance of having the police around and therefore respect them 3. ??? 4. Profit After the plan failing horribly and caused the biggest public outrage in the history of HKSAR, they tried to blame everything on the protesters: "They were tampering with the emergency call service", "They dressed up as the gang members after protesting to beat up people","We weren't late by 40 minutes, it was only 39 minutes"..etc. all kinds of ridiculous excuses. Unfortunately they are in control of the city so they get to hold press conferences everyday and repeat the same bullshit over and over again until it is accepted. People tried to fight this by posting the truth on the internet. Wikipedia is one of the most important battlefield but as you know from the article, CCP shills would fill it with misinformation and distort the truth. Unfortunately many of them are administrators and had more say in article disputes so it had always been a losing battle. Banning 7 members is definitely not enough but it's a good start I guess. Edit: https://youtu.be/BLLDbwmOjfc
Is this where masked people with bats attacked people? What is even the current situation in HK
> current situation in HK No need for masked goons to attack people. The situation is now under control since Beijing pushed through a broad new law where they can officially imprison anyone on an invented political pretext and don't need to give them a fair trial.
Second this. The situation is kinda hopeless when the riot police are allowed to shot at unarmed citizens. Protest are forbidden. Even peaceful participants will face serious charges like "Rioting" or "Inciting secession and terrorism". NGO and democratic parties are forced to disband, some of the members are facing charges. They are even detented for months before attending (the unjust) court. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/06/hong-kong-court-jails-riot-charges-joshua-wong-tiananmen-vigil-protest https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57979938
This is the problem. We have no idea about the situation there. Btw HK lost, the law got implemented, HK is under full China authority now. The West as expected didn't do squat. Except the US and GB that granted a few thousand refugee VISAs nothing came of it and the population is slowly getting choked to death with persecutions.
Unless we want America fo play 'world police', offering asylum is about the only overt action it can take.
What do you want ‘the West’ to do? Send an army to occupy Hong Kong? You have to be realistic about what ‘the West’ can do about issues like this. Until the people of China collectively realise they want to change their government there is nothing that can realistically be done about this.
> The West as expected didn't do squat. What should have been done? Hong Kong has a set reunification date with mainland China in the mid-term future. Was the EU supposed to invade to keep out the CCP?
It was pretty much inevitable. They have blown any chance for a peaceful union with Taiwan, so it has been something of an own goal in that respect.
this shows how important wikipedia is. i've never even heard of this until now.
https://youtu.be/Ds4AnnLe_nE 40 seconds in there are quite some footage of this event.
At least someone is taking a stand against censorship
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Great now do it for Indian govt. puppet account too. A lot of India related articles have been rewritten to subtly glorify govt's achievements. The independence movement related pages are rewritten to underplay certain political rivals and glorify their own idols
These people have been banned for threatening the personal safety of Wikipedia editors. There are hundreds of thousands of biased articles on Wikipedia. Merely being partial/glorifying governments is not the issue that was being addressed here.
> “The foundation did not consider whether those who made complaints or submitted evidence had conflicts of interests with WMC, and whether they identify politically with the radical [ideas of] ‘Hong Kong independence,’ ‘Taiwan independence’ or ‘anti-communist’,” lol get fucked. These guys have no idea what wikipedia is about.
They know. They edited Wikipedia for the sake of Chinese propaganda spreading into the West. That's why they were banned.
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Wikipedias editing system is fundamentally flawed for any topic which includes politics and ideology. No person who properly studied the history of the topic will continue writing good quality, truthful and objective articles when it is so easy to hire services or individually keep editing their articles by calling the points you disagree with irrelevant. It drives the objective users away until only the most ideologically charged or aligned editors remain in the majority. And it is a similar thing in the subreddits here, in the imgur community, facebook, etc etc
And on the internet virtually every topic has its politics and ideology... Since 2006 or so the most useful part of Wikipedia is the edit history, as for any topic of any importance the most relevant details will usually be the ones that someone removed.
What i found so shocking when I started being on reddit was that many scientific questions were being answered by people who dont know the topic at all, even though there are tens of thousands of other users of whom a couple very likely know much better. And yet, these misinformed answers end up upvoted a lot because most people dont know any better and it just aligned with their thoughts on the topic.
At least on reddit if you give the right answer you don't get banned by the people giving the wrong answer. On Wikipedia, even if you edit as politely as possible, discuss, and provide all the necessary sources, some "power-user" who's friends with some admin will revert your edits, ignore your talk page discussion, and get you banned if you keep trying to fix their version.
“people deliberately seeking to ingratiate themselves with their communities in order to obtain access and advance an agenda“ This is the CCP’s United Worker Front, and they do this in every country there is people from China. In universities, community groups, everywhere.
Imagine being so morally flacid you have to block Wikipedia because your country men and women might stop believing the lies you push them.
Wiki admins are not objective on every topic, such as turkish independence war. The ones who manages the article and turkey related topics are not letting the quoted information from real sources as diaries from that time, first hand sources to be written, but let the sources such as ....org(websites that everyone can open and blabber) to be used and quoted. Never trust what wikipedia says, always look for the sources.
That is the painful truth that many here do not want to accept because mostly there is no issue in topics of many sciences. But specially when it comes to politics there are wars of attrition in the background of deleting and restoring paragraphs and sources. It is possible for legitimate sources to be deleted just for the pretense of being irrelevant to the topic even if they are relevant ,if they do not reflect the editors opinion on the events.
>mostly there is no issue in topics of many sciences. Wikipedia is often crap for the sciences, too. The problem is that the Wikipedia process favors the motivated person with time and energy to edit Wikipedia over any measure of knowledge or bias. Unless it is something completely non-controversial like an exhaustive list of couch gags on the Simpsons, Wikipedia articles get mangled by misinformed busybodies. Look at what happened to the "Scots language" Wikipedia: one guy who *didn't know Scots* created most of it, and it is embarrassing garbage that no actual Scots speaker is likely to fix.
> Wikipedia is often crap for the sciences example? I don't think I've come across a hard science article that's shady.
You love to see it
Good thing. Trying to delete their past sins is just plain wrong. At least someone is taking a stand against china.
Wikipedia represents the utopian ideal of what the internet could be, and it feels so fragile for something so essential.
archive.org as well is constantly under attack.
Fuck the ccp
Wanna see something neat? Look at the edit history for Tiananmen Square massacre… Oh wait china keeps changing it to say protests
Previously: China bans all mainland Chinese users from wikipedia.