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China Fakes 488 Million Social Media Posts a Year To Deceive Its Citizens (bloomberg.com)
In an attempt to keep its citizens from seeing bad news and getting involved in sensitive political debates, China's government fabricates about 488 million social media comments a year, reports Bloomberg citing a study (PDF). The propaganda workers who post comments are known as Fifty Cent Party because they are believed to be paid 50 Chinese cents by the Chinese government for every comment they post. From the report: Although those who post comments are often rumored to be ordinary citizens, the researchers were surprised to find that nearly all the posts were written by workers at government agencies including tax and human resource departments, and at courts. The researchers said they found no evidence that people were paid for the posts, adding the work was probably part of the employees' job responsibilities. Fifty Cent Party is a derogatory term since it implies people are bought off cheaply.
About half of the positive messages appear on government websites, and the rest are injected into the 80 billion social media posts that enter China's Internet. That means one of every 178 social media posts on China's micro blogs is made up by the government, the researchers said. The sites affected include those run by Tencent Holdings Ltd., Sina Corp. and Baidu Inc.
Too lazy to RTFA, but a "Fifty Cent" party sounds like a good time.
>> China Fakes 488 Million Social Media Posts a Year To Deceive Its Citizens
Hmm...that seems low. Here in the US, I'll bet we're at least over a billion on this statistic.
e.g., http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/18/ap-perpetuates-tale-benghazi-attack-caused-anti-is/
fortunately in the US we have useful idiots that make the same types of postings free of charge!
Facebook gets caught adding fake stories to its feeds. Not to be outdone, China lets it leak that they're doing the same thing, but a few thousand times as much of it.
Show offs.
slackers. less than a billion followers, too.
Our glorious country and it's beloved leaders would never do such a thing. Please report to a nearby office for re-education.
Same as the pro-nuclear crowd here. I'd really like to know how much they are paid.
Fifty Cent Party is a derogatory term since it implies people are bought off cheaply.
And to think there are people in the world willing to do this for no money at all! Imagine being paid, even if it is 50c, for something that you would likely already do, anyway.
if they'd pay me two bits for my opinion, they can have the other half
I can't help finding it slightly ironic that this academic study was apparently funded by the US federal government.
"Our thanks to... DARPA (contract W31P4Q-13-C-0055/983-3) and the National Science Foundation (grant 1500086) for research support".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Where you would literally choke on the government's propaganda, ie the horribly polluted air.
488 million accounts are being faked to help spread doom, fear, and other bad news over stupid, menial things like which bathroom people should use, and why unisex bathrooms are the worst idea in the history of the world.
We need now the same kind of study to verify how many paid drones do so on the corporate states of america. I don't doubt the number of government-sponsored posts is very low in the USA, but the corporate propaganda drive there should never be underestimated...
What if all of those positive posts are actually genuine, the Chinese people love their life and leaders, and the negative spin is just how America deceives its people?
50 cents/ post sounds low ?
I'd take that HERE even with a good job. Sounds like easy money.
Seems on english speaking sites I run in to far more Putin shills.
2+2=5
Wow! What a surprise!!! All the Chinese do is lie, cheat, steal, etc. all in the name of Communism and in the name of looking good. Do they even have their own inventions anymore?? Remember those computer graphics footprint fireworks from the Olympics. Yeah...those weren't real even though they claimed to be. And after visiting the Bird's Nest in Beijing just a year after the Olympics, that place is now a dump.
The sad part is that if you asked around (in China), you would find that a large percentage, if not the majority, of Chinese people actually "support" these forms of oppression. THAT is the power of indoctrination. When you spend your entire life knowing nothing but authoritarianism and oppression, and being told constantly that it's for your benefit, you will have a very difficult time imagining the alternative. It's similar to how a life-long prisoner, upon being set free, finds that he just can't function properly outside of prison. The authoritarianism is actually comforting to them, and that's exactly how the rulers would have it. The only people who dare to imagine a better society are the radicals, and we all know what happens to radicals in China.
Or maybe your worldview is so skewed, you call everyone who disagrees with you a shill.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It is not 0.50 USD. It is 0.50 RMB, or about 0.08 USD.
I wonder how much they post. Oh but you'll write me off as a conspiracy theorist when I know it happens -quite a lot actually.
...we could read what percentage of comments on our social media are government propaganda.
At least money goes to the people and not to the managers.
Russian Trolls!
Over 1.33 million posts a day
Almost 55,500 an hour
Just over 9000 per minute....
That's one way to bump up employment
China provides you with all the smog you could possible want and you still complain? They have NO smog at all in the western world, or at the very least they can only get it in really huge cities, and even then not always. In wonderful China you can now even have it in the countryside more often than not, and the Chairman and his people are toiling hard day and night to ensure that you will never have to exist without!
Also, dear party, I haven't been paid for over two weeks... I mean, I had the pleasure of enjoying participating in the glorious spreading of our enlightened truth for two weeks but I'd like to get some ramen again, if you could possibly find it in your endlessly big heart to fuckin' pay me?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So the approximately 50 posts I shit every day into /. are worth about 4 bucks?
Hmm... Is there any kind of requirement how long or informative the posts have to be?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
3 point back at you.
Private businesses do this all the time. It stands to reason that a state capitalist country would employ people to do this too.
That does seem low. Only 488 million?? In a country with eighty billion social posts a year?
I would have guessed a much higher number.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Here in the USA, we just pay Fox News to do all that for us.
Over 9000? Huh...
So, basically it's the Chinese version of the Jewish Internet Defense Force or Hillary Clinton's Correct the Record shills.
Or, how about these shadowy forces controlling online conversations in the US?
Not to mention the Pentagon, Shell Oil, and all the other shills. I don't mean to pick on the USA, everyone employs shills. Hell Germany goes above and beyond and has Merkel trying to silence anti-immigration political views on Facebook.
protip: If you use social media you are either being deceived or are a deceiver.
Certain people have purchased media, and at the same time placed puppets into the Government. This is why no matter who we have in office the shit continues. We don't hear about horrible policies and are drown in "interest" stories (AKA Propaganda).
This is not new, it started back in at least the 60s. Start to track the point where "Conspiracy" synonymous with "false narrative" and "Conspiracy Theorist" was used as an ad hominem against certain types of investigative reporters covering specific types of stories.
Not that the public at large was ever crazy intelligent, but in the last 50 years we have gone from mostly rational to a place where in general people can not tell fact from fantasy. "Feelings" today trump facts in the majority of our discussions in Political Philosophy and Sociology.
I read long ago that there are two possible ways to view the world. One, pushed by media and politicians, is that everything is accidental and results which could never be predicted. The other, which is ignored by media and politicians, is that most things are intentional with results which are predicted with reasonable accuracy. When you consider that the people in politics are the highest educated among society, with literally teams of highly educated people working as advisers and think tanks, which do you find the more likely world view?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
In order to make that determination, you'd need to characterize the sites GP is talking about. There are so many websites out there, in the intertubes..
It would be understandable if their correct factual errors and have the responsibility of stating their position and particular connection to the issue, as well always writing only facts outside of politics of any party in the Chinese closet multiparty system. Any bias would be punishable by disciplinary action, of course. Wait, did they claim they have only a single party in China? Those deluded fools!
Americans fake billions of social media posts every day to deceive other Americans.
70-80% of social media is bots and bull shit.
Take a random large account in Twitter for start, 70-80% of followers are inactive and and large % of "active" are fake or bots.
... that NO one in the west does this ever for any reason. It'd be crazy, governments using information to keep their citizens nice and cohesive.
Oh, by the way, what is Hollywood accounting and why does no one go to prison for it ever?
not to radicalize, but to emigrate.
When the shit hits the fan, do you really want to be in the largest nuke target in the world?
captcha was 'bedrock', as in all that would be left standing.
There used to be stronger enforcement of laws requiring "Paid For by Group" in political solicitations. This needs to be a priority, including First Amendment rights applied to people to people - NOT CORPORATIONS. We need MORE transparency laws when it comes to money in politics. Keep corporations/government out of the publics private communication.
So the question is, how many posts on this thread will be from the 50 cent party ?
Every forum or google search I've done on anything controversial in the last few years is rather obviously populated by people trying to bias opinions or spread obviously false (but oh, so *happy-talk*) information.
Mentally, you filter it out. Many folks don't, I'm sure.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I don't. I know people like him. They even call me a Putin shill just because I disagree with their opinion even though I've already been on Slashdot when Putin was a small fish yet.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's not just China influencing its citizens opinions. The US intimidates the media and various activists around the country on a routine bassos. Here is just one story that come close to home for me. So to continue with this the US government routinely attacks political activists it doesn't like. While there is civil disobedience going on where I live in Keene, New Hampshire for example and in New Hampshire in general the government has aimed its attention at a few people in particular in there attempt to disrupt activities here and undermine the Free State Project as a whole.
At first they used 'inspection' law on one very large and vocal activist whom has brought many people to New Hampshire. The 'inspection' law here is in itself a crock and in violation if not in practice than in spirit of the constitution. Basically it goes like this. If you refuse inspectors in New Hampshire (entrance to your home) they'll put an evaluation for the home (for tax purposes) at some ridicules amount. One guy here had his shack set at a million dollars for refusing entrance to inspectors (they can't legally enter because the government needs a warrant). But there are other types of inspection that apparently the fire marshall for example can do.
Now in the case of Ian Freeman the government went in and got a warrant [not an evaluation of the home for taxes in this case]. That's not proper procedure though. They should have sent a letter first requesting access, but none-the-less this is in part how we know he's being targeted here. The tactics were scare tactics and little more [at that time]. They wanted to put the fear of government into Ian Freeman. They wanted him to know they can do whatever they want with impunity. Ian Freeman runs a liberty-oriented radio show that often attacks the state for criminal and wrongful acts it carries out on its citizens. The government doesn't like it. The crime they got him on? Not having a working smoke alarm (battery needed replaced I think).
They've done other stuff in there efforts to target him and undermine the larger Free State Project movement. There is a hate group in Keene called Stop Free Keene. This group or members thereof are posting libel about Ian Freeman in the down town area. Free Keene is an activist site that Ian Freeman runs. They started doing this a few months back. The posters claim Ian Freeman promotes child molestation and implies he is a danger to the towns children. They twisted a story about how he was molested into him promoting child molestation. A few weeks ago the FBI raided his home, business, and the towns activist center which he runs on the basis that someone accessed that Tor child porn site where the * FBI was distributing child porn *. Well, Ian Freeman used his radio show to attack the FBI on the hypocrisy of it all. Ian didn't promote child porn or child molestation. He *attacked* the government for doing the exact thing they were arresting others for. And guess what happens two weeks later after he attacked them for this? They raid the activist center, his home, and business, and they take all *our* stuff. It wasn't just Ian's stuff. But anybody who lived near him. People who rented from him, etc. They shut down Ian's business, they took a number of activists computers, and so on. All based on the supposed testimony from an FBI agent that someone supposedly accessed a Tor child porn site from the internet connection of which hundreds of people have access to [and was in Ian's name]. The same site where the FBI was itself distributing child porn.
No- they're attacking Ian Freeman the same way they attacked Julian Assange. The FBI has zero evidence anybody accessed child porn and there were no arrests at the time of the raid either. It's a complete smear campaign and one intended to disrupt the activists and movement. It looks bad for the movement so the Free State Project disassociated with Ian Freeman and his business. See where this is going? The goal is to disrupt. You don't have to be committing a crime even. Now there are p
I'm not sure how you slept through the last several years but you did. Snowden dumped the complete playbook and we found it to be the US Government inside of everything all the time. More than half of the countries we ally with in Europe have shit canned US services and ban new projects from landing on US servers. Not because "Ebil IBM and MS" but the more "EBIL UNCLE SAM".
Several whistle blowers have been jailed, reporters have been jailed and threatened, and lawsuits have been filed by numerous parties. Stonewalls have been erected all over Washington DC, and countless very high ranking politicians spend extended durations of time doing nothing but denying what they did was "really" wrong.
Since you have slept through the last few years, you probably also missed the US having black sites, covering up wrongful death in the middle east, etc....etc.. Maybe you should try living out of the cave for a while. You can't be an incarnation of a different sockpuppet 'cf" trying ot re-write history can you? Nah, you have to be crazy from all the batshit.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
They're called Democrats. Go look at the comments section of any political story on nbcnews.com, and you'll find dozens to hundreds of identical pro-Democrat comments. Then read the story which got almost no attention in the media about the Clinton SuperPAC spending millions to hire astroturfers. I'm sure the other side does it too, but as of yet I can't find any evidence. The Craigslist political jobs section is 100% Liberal here in Chicago.
How can Tencent Holdings afford to pay fifty cents a post?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
China puts out 488 million posts. In the US the DNC only spent $1M to pay spammers to put out pro Hillary lies. That being said, I'm sure the RNC will do the same or worse. The real sad part is that the citizens believe the crap must be true... once again voting for the one that will do the least damage.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Expel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... from your country
Casteism
A more useful article would be a contrast comparison between China's cointelpro and other Western countries.
China is not the only country who does this.