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China Hires As Many As 300,000 Internet Trolls (2 posts)

  1. truthmod
    Administrator

    Nothing like this could be going on in America though, right?

    http://www.businessinsider.in/China-Hires-As-Many-...

    The Chinese government doesn't just censor its internet. It actually pays people to leave fake comments that make the country - and its communist regime - look good.

    An estimated 250,000 to 300,000 belong to the "party," researchers from Harvard University wrote in the American Political Science Review in May 2013. "The size and sophistication of the Chinese government's program to selectively censor the expressed views of the Chinese people is unprecedented in recorded world history," the authors wrote.

    British magazine the New Statesman actually tracked down one of these hired propagandists in 2012. The anonymous 26-year-old said he had "too many usernames" to count and that he recieved an email from the local internet publicity office every morning explaining what news he should focus on that day.

    "It's kind of psychological ... You can make a bad thing sound even worse, make an elaborate account, and make people think it's nonsense when they see it," he told the Statesman's Ai Weiwei.

    Posted 10 years ago #
  2. truthmod
    Administrator

    China’s Paid Trolls: Meet the 50-Cent Party

    http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012...

    blurring the public focus, going off the topic is very effective. For example, during the census, everyone will be talking about its truthfulness or necessity; then I’ll post jokes that appeared in the census. Or, in other instances, I would publish adverts to take up space on political news reports.

    Can you tell us a specific, typical process of “guiding public opinion”?

    For example, each time the oil price is about to go up, we’ll receive a notification to “stabilise the emotions of netizens and divert public attention”. The next day, when news of the rise comes out, netizens will definitely be condemning the state, CNPC and Sinopec. At this point, I register an ID and post a comment: “Rise, rise however you want, I don’t care. Best if it rises to 50 yuan per litre: it serves you right if you’re too poor to drive. Only those with money should be allowed to drive on the roads . . .”

    This sounds like I’m inviting attacks but the aim is to anger netizens and divert the anger and attention on oil prices to me. I would then change my identity several times and start to condemn myself. This will attract more attention. After many people have seen it, they start to attack me directly. Slowly, the content of the whole page has also changed from oil price to what I’ve said. It is very effective.

    Can you tell which online comments are by online commentators?

    Because I do this, I can tell at a glance that about 10 to 20 per cent out of the tens of thousands of comments posted on a forum are made by online commentators.

    Posted 10 years ago #

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