Comment by somenameforme
2 years ago
So I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is.
This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them with auto-translated Chinese newswire and blog stuff, local scraped stuff, etc. and then claims they're "major foreign media outlets", which they then sell access to for the riveting price of just 1.4 million won - about $1000. It looks like a modern take on something like a 419 scam, except I expect they probably do follow through on publishing whatever people submit!
Granted not as exciting a discovery as a shadowy influence operation with a super sexy nickname, but probably more accurate.
This is the key to many scams these days - you're not the person being scammed, you're a byproduct or accident.
E.g., all that pointless spam that doesn't even have a way to buy anything whatsoever? Spammers selling services to people who don't know what they're doing.
Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents?
I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me.
It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people. It's common knowledge that the Chinese government has a history of censoring information that shows them in a bad light, promoting largely false self-aggrandizing narratives, and attacking anyone who challenges them. It shouldn't be surprising at all that the internet outside of their great firewall is a major focus of their operations. Given a lack of direct sources to determine the truth of the situation, I will always lean towards believing that this is part of their established modus operandi, rather than minimizing it by claiming it's just another "amateur hour scam operation".
Please make your substantive points without swipes, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.
This is particularly important when the topic is divisive. That's in the guidelines too btw.
Noted. I toned it down a bit.
What do you think Chinese news and blogs are full of?
These are not Chinese news and blogs. These sites are created in the language and region of other countries, sometimes by scraping the content of other local sites, and then filling them with the usual Chinese propaganda. Chinese people are not the target audience.
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> Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents?
What does the irrelevant adjective “blatant” have to do with anything? And why is “ad hominem” significant when 95% of politics is about technically fallacious argumentation such as that?
Oh, a 10KUSD FB ad campaign bought by Kremlin and targeted at the US population? Obvious psyop, yes. Also completely irrelevant noise in the scheme of things, just like this apparent “amateur hour” operation.
It’s about having an appropriate response to “bad things”. There is no need to freak out about a few ants in the backyard.
> It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people.
Of course. As “highly educated people” we are supposed to circle the wagons and irrationally blow apparent low-effort (again according to the OP) psyops out of proportion because it’s an enemy regime. That’s after all the primary ideological role of the “highly educated people” (loose source: Chomsky).