I once interpreted for a crew recording "man on the street" interviews. I had no experience working in TV, I was a last minute replacement.
At the beginning of the day, the producer listed the opinions he wanted to get. "Ok, we'll get a middle aged guy who says this, a younger couple saying something along these lines". He knew exactly what he wanted at the start of the day.
There were three camera crews working most of the day getting interviews. I get the feeling that with a bit of editing you could have make "the public" have pretty much any view on a topic that you want.
I was at an election briefing at a large media organisation a few years ago, one of the chief editors told the journalists "We can't stop you using vox pops, but please don't use them much" and that (paraphrasing) "they are usually awful, we know they add color but they detract from the story and become the story"
Of course "Person confirming stereotype" attracts clicks and shares, is easy to do, and that's good for career progression. Actually finding out what's happening, explaining what it means, the who, what, where, when, why of the story, that's hard.
Much easier to say
"Mr X thinks this is terrible"
Than say
"This is terrible because...., but it's good because...."
Yes indeed. During the 1990s I first became aware of this as a comedy trope.
Loads of TV shows were using these techniques to make the public say all kinds of crazy shit as if they were widely held opinions.
It was funny because back in the 90s it seemed like, well at least to me, that we still trusted journalists and we didn't have social media. So seeing interviews obviously manipulated was funny.
I can also remember Charlie Brooker, the Black Mirror guy, showing the same footage from a set up reality TV show[1].
By just using editing he could show the same event but with very different interpretations.
Instinctively I think we all know that but seeing it done as demonstration is shocking and fascinating.
I only really noticed this when I watched Making a Murderer on Netflix. After each episode my opinion switched between "They were definitely set up by the police" and "They're definitely guilty." If the show had ended after one or the other episode I would have probably firmly held either view. Definitely impacted the trust I put in any media. Or rather the trust in myself to not be manipulated.
I was once interviewed for a national TV channel about the security of open and proprietary systems. Since I wanted to present a balanced view, I started with a disclaimer, saying that open source can not be equated with a higher level of security by itself, but then I proceeded to present a couple of arguments about the advantages of open systems, and I specifically stressed the need for crucial communications components (like SSH) to be open.
Guess what, it turned out they made a program on "how Linux is less secure than Windows" and cut out my whole interview leaving just the initial disclaimer that, taken out of context, seemed to justify their agenda. From that time on, I refused any kinds of interviews for TV.
I mean the sad thing about this one is that of all the vox pop content producers, Asian Boss doesn't do nearly the worst manipulation or selective editing. (The worst ones make people sound like idiots, which is unfortunately pretty easy.) Some of their content is genuinely powerful for it and frankly this video on the whole is pretty amazing by the thoughtfulness of the people they interview. It's too bad that they had to arrange something to get a pro-unification viewpoint on camera, but it would've been ok if they'd just owned up to it with a brief caption introducing that person as who they are. The real problem is they didn't do that and I do agree with TFA that it's a bad ethical lapse.
Like articles with embedded twitter/reddit posts in them. Sure it gives a primary source for whatever topic/view you want to support - but aside from "one person might think this" is pretty irrelevant.
I live in Taiwan. Very, very few people here are pro-PRC. Tons of Taiwanese people love China and culturally consider themselves Chinese (to be clear, not Chinese citizens.)
The vast majority of people disagree on if they should either give up and surrender to the PRC because they may launch missiles or invade once they have a non-laughing stock navy, avoid a bloody war, or if China wouldn’t dare to do that because it would trigger WW3 so they are safe to declare and protect their country (Taiwan.)
Everyone out here agrees that the PRC is basically evil.
Edit: Just want to add that a lot of you probably have no idea that Chinese people and Taiwanese people also get along with each other just fine. They are unfortunately a geopolitical chess piece on the table between the PRC and Deep State US.
I find it deliciously ironic that when Taiwanese people travel or work in China that they use their ROC (Taiwanese) passport and there is no issue with that. A lot of the conflict is also theatre for your American news cycle.
My wife is Taiwanese, so I can confirm Taiwanese and Chinese get along fine. Many marriages, friendships and business partnerships cross the Taiwan Strait.
However Taiwanese people don't use their passport to travel to China. China doesn't recognise it. They are issued a travel permit by the PRC, similar to citizens of Hong Kong and Macau.
Besides some outlier ultra nationalists, most regular citizens of the mainland are also not huge fans of the CCP either and would happily get along with Taiwanese. And I have met some Taiwanese who even ironically have an overly romanticized view of the mainland --- seeing it as having made huge strides economically compared to the somewhat stagnant local economy.
At the end of the day, Taiwan culturally has more in common with the mainland than, say, Hong Kong does, because more of its history was spent together. Anything beyond is often a lot of "the grass is greener on the other side" mentality happening. People on both sides envy some aspects of what the other side has, but also would not trade what they have themselves to get it.
We do get alone quite well at least in my circle. In my opinion people from Taiwan are actually more tolerate and warm than us. But increasingly young people from mainland are catching up and becoming more international.
I can't imagine how anyone from taiwan could naturally be 'Pro' chinese gov (given the media portrait and long history of rivalry), they would more likely support either 'green' or 'blue' camp, who will act on behave of people to interface with mainland policies.
The difference is some of my close Taiwanese friends are very weary of the political shows as they believe it is highly industrialised consumable entertainment while in the mainland people are quite innocent and audience are not mature enough and easily stirred up emotionally.
0) This surprisingly has nothing to do with chess engines or the US Democratic Party.
1) Documentary programs are almost always faked, in the sense that they present false continuity and false spontaneity. People often don't notice the manufactured aspect unless a subject they're intimately involved with is featured, and then it's immediately apparent.
I had some training on video news production, from a guy that does editing for major channels. You simply can't make engaging video without lots of cutting and splicing. You have to re-order segments to make a coherent storyline. All "live" video news is processed this way, otherwise nobody would watch it.
The scales fell from my eyes; that was the beginning of my awakening to the true nature of video news.
I used to see these Vox Pop YouTube videos occasionally. Like the line up videos, street interviews and what not. The issue I realized people are never going to give their open and unbiased opinion about something. Because they are moderated, edited and these people are always subjected to some form peer pressure from the group or the producers surrounding them.
Moreover the questions are drafted in a "so you are saying" kind of way. Now that is assuming the production is random and fair and they are not hiring actors or screening people based on their political belief systems, which is obviously not the case.
Being outside of US, I thought there are geopolitical and socially ambiguous questions which were drafted in a pattern that subtly were politically biased.
Now, subtle political biasness would make people think I am a little bit out there. But what I realized I don't inherently have any strong political feelings at all. There are some objectively true facts that are often being manipulated to fit narratives. So it is best just to ignore these shows all together.
These Vox Pop crap is nothing better than day time reality shows like 90 Days Fiancé, but atleast these reality shows are transparently stupid and does not want toy with an agenda.
I don't take this vox pop crap for more than what it is either, but this is about as honest as some China-based channel arranging an interview with Alex Jones in a random park and passing it off as the voice of a random American man of the street
For those who like me didn't understand the title. From paragraph 9:
> For those who don't know, "deep blue" means very pro-KMT, generally favoring Chinese identity, closer ties with China and eventual unification with China.
Search for KMT leads to Wikipedia article that says it is the same as Guomindang, the party was exciled from mainland China to Taiwan in 1949. I don't know how it evolved to "eventual unification" from "Taiwan is the only China", so I prefer to skip the article entirely as non-comprehensible.
To somewhat relief your confusion (but not nearly entirely; the KMT switching to pro-unification is in itself extremely incomprehensible that even Taiwanese don’t understand), the KMT never held the view “Taiwan is the only China”. Their original view was more like “we rule the only China from Taiwan” (and that China is even bigger than the PROC’s current territories).
The title sounds very cryptic. It should actually be somewhere along the lines of "Asian Boss a YouTube channel interviewed a popular Pro-CCP Youtuber and pretended he was just an ordinary man on the street"
He's not a pro-CCP Youtuber, but a pro-KMT one, the KMT being the CCP's opponents in the Chinese civil war. Their party flag is blue with a white sun (found in the upper-left corner of the Taiwanese flag), hence "deep blue".
Green is the color of the Democratic Progressive Party (currently in power, and the historical anti-KMT (read: anti-authoritarian) party)[0]. Green has thus become the color of the Taiwanese independence movement (i.e. not "Republic of China", but "Republic of Taiwan")
Blue is the color of the KMT (former dictator party)[1], whose logo is still the top-left quadrant of the flag of Taiwan[2]. Historically, this party has claimed to be the politically legitimate government of all of China (as the "Republic of China" rather than the "People's Republic of China"), but lately is effectively an arm of the Communist Party of China.
I wonder how many accounts the chinese state maintains on hackernews to upvote/downvote post and comments. It's an easy way to influence the public opinion and hard to expose.
I am not pro-Chinese, I am French with no ties to China. But I have downvoted/flagged anti-China posts and comments a few times.
There is an anti-China sentiment in the US that just feels wrong, and it shows on HN. Every time something good is said about the Chinese state, or even if it is "not that bad", it is Chinese propaganda. Every time someone says that China is evil, it is the truth, as if US propaganda couldn't exist. I am not saying that China is good, just that it is one-sided enough to raise a few red flags (pun not intended).
So, I downvote, most of it isn't interesting from a tech perspective anyways. It what I think of that submission. In fact, I am only here because I was curious about what "deep blue" meant (for me it meant IBM).
You are free to disagree with me, here I am just telling you that there is at least one person who has nothing to do with the Chinese state and dislike anti-China content.
Not many, I think. I usually look at the new section of HN and check what has been flagged unreasonably. Anti-chinese post are rarely flagged multiple times.
My opinion is that there are honest pro-chinese people on HN, most likely chinese working in the US who don't plan to stay for life and feel patriotic enough to protect the fatherland on internet forums.
I am pro Chinese myself, I’m not getting paid by anybody, and I can assure you that posting pro Chinese comments here gets them flagged pretty quickly. But I’m not sure if it is because people don’t like those opinions or because they think it’s unlikely anybody can be pro Chinese so they automatically think you are a propaganda account. It could very well be either, based on my past experiences posting comments that go against the “allowed” politics of the site.
Which videos/topics are affected by that, in your opinion? Just curious what you have seen, since they have videos from multiple countries by multiple authors.
This is an instance of something true-by-default about media, journalism & such. What you see, read or hear is a story. A story told by a journalist or producer.
It might be plants. It might be selective editing, with certain interviews making the cut... possibly a minority from a wide selection. The choice of question. The choice of location. Etc. It's just generally true that these are stories contrived by someone.
We know this intellectually, but seeing and hearing still tends to beat our skepticism. Reality TV is, to me, the perfect example of this. Even though everyone knows reality TV is fake, we usually "forget" that a conversation between 2 people is taking place in front of a cameraman. That is, we don't really forget, but we also don't interpret the conversation as we would if we actually saw the cameraman.
People love micro-trottoire, you can find thousand of youtube channel doing them for country X, a lot with millions of views.
They are one of the form of journalism that are the most easy to manipulate (show mostly one opinion, show "crazy" people for one opinion and only "classy" people for the other, ...) and their value is therefore very questionable (plus, who care what the guy down the street thinks about complex subject he has no education to have a opinion about). Sadly, a lot of people take them at face value.
I know this blog post is niche but title could be edited to simplify what "deep blue YouTuber" means here. For HN readers I mean.
"...planted pro-China advocate for 'man on the street' opinions on Taiwan"
> For those who don't know, "deep blue" means very pro-KMT, generally favoring Chinese identity, closer ties with China and eventual unification with China.
That's so sad ... I used to follow the channel from its beginnings, especially when they used to cover exclusively Korea and Japan (with Kei), but since then I dropped off.
I'm very saddened to see it has reached this state.
Yep. Me too. Followed after their first few videos which were interesting, but then stopped after they started making it an entertainment channel and could see through their lies.
At least now I can tie a name to these shitty channel style: "vox pop".
For those who are wondering why the title is unclear or misleading: this blog is extremely niche, written for people living in or interested in Taiwan. Bet you the writer behind it, who is well-known in her niche and a permanent resident of Taiwan, never thought this post would make it to this site. There have been some updates since clarifying blue/green in the Taiwan context, so presumably she’s noticed.
For those who are wondering why the title is unclear or misleading: this blog is extremely niche, written for people living in or interested in Taiwan. Bet you the writer behind it, who is well-known in her niche and a permanent resident of Taiwan, never thought this post would make it to this site.
Serious contender for top accidentally-misleading title for a HN story...
* Asian Boss - Not a boss; actually a YouTube channel.
* deep blue - not the chess engine, not the emotional state, not related to the US democratic party; nor to any of the films of this name; nor the songs of that name.
Not sure why they felt the need to go with a plant. The views this guy expressed are enshrined in the constitution and were the dominant ideaology until ~2000. Plenty of the older generation still think this way.
i am chinese, i followed asian boss.
just for click and ads and money , politicized emotion is also for money.
they need money like every company else.
[+] [-] laurieg|4 years ago|reply
At the beginning of the day, the producer listed the opinions he wanted to get. "Ok, we'll get a middle aged guy who says this, a younger couple saying something along these lines". He knew exactly what he wanted at the start of the day.
There were three camera crews working most of the day getting interviews. I get the feeling that with a bit of editing you could have make "the public" have pretty much any view on a topic that you want.
[+] [-] iso1210|4 years ago|reply
Of course "Person confirming stereotype" attracts clicks and shares, is easy to do, and that's good for career progression. Actually finding out what's happening, explaining what it means, the who, what, where, when, why of the story, that's hard.
Much easier to say
"Mr X thinks this is terrible"
Than say
"This is terrible because...., but it's good because...."
[+] [-] Lio|4 years ago|reply
Loads of TV shows were using these techniques to make the public say all kinds of crazy shit as if they were widely held opinions.
It was funny because back in the 90s it seemed like, well at least to me, that we still trusted journalists and we didn't have social media. So seeing interviews obviously manipulated was funny.
I can also remember Charlie Brooker, the Black Mirror guy, showing the same footage from a set up reality TV show[1].
By just using editing he could show the same event but with very different interpretations.
Instinctively I think we all know that but seeing it done as demonstration is shocking and fascinating.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRW1cPGYgoQ
[+] [-] somedude895|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hdjjhhvvhga|4 years ago|reply
Guess what, it turned out they made a program on "how Linux is less secure than Windows" and cut out my whole interview leaving just the initial disclaimer that, taken out of context, seemed to justify their agenda. From that time on, I refused any kinds of interviews for TV.
[+] [-] ridaj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goldcd|4 years ago|reply
Like articles with embedded twitter/reddit posts in them. Sure it gives a primary source for whatever topic/view you want to support - but aside from "one person might think this" is pretty irrelevant.
[+] [-] alfiedotwtf|4 years ago|reply
Watching Meerkat Manor when I was younger taught me that any narrative can be archived with a bit of editing
[+] [-] kinghtown|4 years ago|reply
The vast majority of people disagree on if they should either give up and surrender to the PRC because they may launch missiles or invade once they have a non-laughing stock navy, avoid a bloody war, or if China wouldn’t dare to do that because it would trigger WW3 so they are safe to declare and protect their country (Taiwan.)
Everyone out here agrees that the PRC is basically evil.
Edit: Just want to add that a lot of you probably have no idea that Chinese people and Taiwanese people also get along with each other just fine. They are unfortunately a geopolitical chess piece on the table between the PRC and Deep State US.
I find it deliciously ironic that when Taiwanese people travel or work in China that they use their ROC (Taiwanese) passport and there is no issue with that. A lot of the conflict is also theatre for your American news cycle.
[+] [-] rnmwfQ3f|4 years ago|reply
However Taiwanese people don't use their passport to travel to China. China doesn't recognise it. They are issued a travel permit by the PRC, similar to citizens of Hong Kong and Macau.
[+] [-] jabbany|4 years ago|reply
At the end of the day, Taiwan culturally has more in common with the mainland than, say, Hong Kong does, because more of its history was spent together. Anything beyond is often a lot of "the grass is greener on the other side" mentality happening. People on both sides envy some aspects of what the other side has, but also would not trade what they have themselves to get it.
[+] [-] dumb1224|4 years ago|reply
I can't imagine how anyone from taiwan could naturally be 'Pro' chinese gov (given the media portrait and long history of rivalry), they would more likely support either 'green' or 'blue' camp, who will act on behave of people to interface with mainland policies.
The difference is some of my close Taiwanese friends are very weary of the political shows as they believe it is highly industrialised consumable entertainment while in the mainland people are quite innocent and audience are not mature enough and easily stirred up emotionally.
[+] [-] throw8932894|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zuminator|4 years ago|reply
1) Documentary programs are almost always faked, in the sense that they present false continuity and false spontaneity. People often don't notice the manufactured aspect unless a subject they're intimately involved with is featured, and then it's immediately apparent.
[+] [-] denton-scratch|4 years ago|reply
The scales fell from my eyes; that was the beginning of my awakening to the true nature of video news.
[+] [-] anyfactor|4 years ago|reply
Moreover the questions are drafted in a "so you are saying" kind of way. Now that is assuming the production is random and fair and they are not hiring actors or screening people based on their political belief systems, which is obviously not the case.
Being outside of US, I thought there are geopolitical and socially ambiguous questions which were drafted in a pattern that subtly were politically biased.
Now, subtle political biasness would make people think I am a little bit out there. But what I realized I don't inherently have any strong political feelings at all. There are some objectively true facts that are often being manipulated to fit narratives. So it is best just to ignore these shows all together.
These Vox Pop crap is nothing better than day time reality shows like 90 Days Fiancé, but atleast these reality shows are transparently stupid and does not want toy with an agenda.
[+] [-] ridaj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iso1210|4 years ago|reply
Why anyone listens to it when some random youtube channel does is incomprehendable.
Ask 1000 people a simple question and you'll get 10 crazy answers. Show 9 crazy answers and 1 normal question and claim 90% of people are crazy.
[+] [-] swarnie|4 years ago|reply
Bonus points if its a presidential candidate.
[+] [-] SergeAx|4 years ago|reply
> For those who don't know, "deep blue" means very pro-KMT, generally favoring Chinese identity, closer ties with China and eventual unification with China.
Search for KMT leads to Wikipedia article that says it is the same as Guomindang, the party was exciled from mainland China to Taiwan in 1949. I don't know how it evolved to "eventual unification" from "Taiwan is the only China", so I prefer to skip the article entirely as non-comprehensible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang
[+] [-] uranusjr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmde|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yorwba|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerikson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] routerl|4 years ago|reply
Blue is the color of the KMT (former dictator party)[1], whose logo is still the top-left quadrant of the flag of Taiwan[2]. Historically, this party has claimed to be the politically legitimate government of all of China (as the "Republic of China" rather than the "People's Republic of China"), but lately is effectively an arm of the Communist Party of China.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Green_Coalition#History
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Blue_Coalition
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Republic_of_China
[+] [-] vlkr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuB-42|4 years ago|reply
There is an anti-China sentiment in the US that just feels wrong, and it shows on HN. Every time something good is said about the Chinese state, or even if it is "not that bad", it is Chinese propaganda. Every time someone says that China is evil, it is the truth, as if US propaganda couldn't exist. I am not saying that China is good, just that it is one-sided enough to raise a few red flags (pun not intended).
So, I downvote, most of it isn't interesting from a tech perspective anyways. It what I think of that submission. In fact, I am only here because I was curious about what "deep blue" meant (for me it meant IBM).
You are free to disagree with me, here I am just telling you that there is at least one person who has nothing to do with the Chinese state and dislike anti-China content.
[+] [-] platinumrad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gostsamo|4 years ago|reply
My opinion is that there are honest pro-chinese people on HN, most likely chinese working in the US who don't plan to stay for life and feel patriotic enough to protect the fatherland on internet forums.
[+] [-] denton-scratch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsodw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logotype|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dncornholio|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kzrdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netcan|4 years ago|reply
It might be plants. It might be selective editing, with certain interviews making the cut... possibly a minority from a wide selection. The choice of question. The choice of location. Etc. It's just generally true that these are stories contrived by someone.
We know this intellectually, but seeing and hearing still tends to beat our skepticism. Reality TV is, to me, the perfect example of this. Even though everyone knows reality TV is fake, we usually "forget" that a conversation between 2 people is taking place in front of a cameraman. That is, we don't really forget, but we also don't interpret the conversation as we would if we actually saw the cameraman.
[+] [-] maeln|4 years ago|reply
They are one of the form of journalism that are the most easy to manipulate (show mostly one opinion, show "crazy" people for one opinion and only "classy" people for the other, ...) and their value is therefore very questionable (plus, who care what the guy down the street thinks about complex subject he has no education to have a opinion about). Sadly, a lot of people take them at face value.
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|4 years ago|reply
"...planted pro-China advocate for 'man on the street' opinions on Taiwan"
> For those who don't know, "deep blue" means very pro-KMT, generally favoring Chinese identity, closer ties with China and eventual unification with China.
[+] [-] aneutron|4 years ago|reply
I'm very saddened to see it has reached this state.
[+] [-] seoulmetro|4 years ago|reply
At least now I can tie a name to these shitty channel style: "vox pop".
There are so many and they're so bad.
[+] [-] chilioil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chilioil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] einpoklum|4 years ago|reply
* Asian Boss - Not a boss; actually a YouTube channel.
* deep blue - not the chess engine, not the emotional state, not related to the US democratic party; nor to any of the films of this name; nor the songs of that name.
[+] [-] bibinou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardfey|4 years ago|reply
- what is at the extremes, and in the middle, can be changing all the time, the view of the author is not "canon" in this sense
- why does a YouTube video have more impact than the research? Perhaps more work on scientific publication is necessary
[+] [-] Stevvo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joostshao|4 years ago|reply