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.

Comments

The sad part

[Anonymous Coward]

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.