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Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument (cnet.com)
Abstract of a study: The Chinese government has long been suspected of hiring as many as 2,000,000 people to surreptitiously insert huge numbers of pseudonymous and other deceptive writings into the stream of real social media posts, as if they were the genuine opinions of ordinary people. Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim that these so-called "50c party" posts vociferously argue for the government's side in political and policy debates. As we show, this is also true of the vast majority of posts openly accused on social media of being 50c. Yet, almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim, or, more importantly, for the Chinese regime's strategic objective in pursuing this activity. In the first large scale empirical analysis of this operation, we show how to identify the secretive authors of these posts, the posts written by them, and their content. We estimate that the government fabricates and posts about 448 million social media comments a year. In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime's strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. From a CNET article, titled, Chinese media told to 'shut down' talk that makes country look bad: Being an internet business in China appears to be getting tougher. Chinese broadcasters, including social media platform Weibo, streamer Acfun and media company Ifeng were told to shut down all audio and visual content that cast the country or its government in bad light, China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television posted on its website on Thursday, saying they violate local regulations. "[The service providers] broadcast large amounts of programmes that don't comply with national rules and propagate negative discussions about public affairs. [The agency] has notified all relevant authorities and ... will take measures to shut down these programmes and rectify the situation," reads the statement.
In some places they just post, but they run reddit entirely.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
US spy operation that manipulates social media : Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.
This article is silly. The real enemy on the internet is Russian hackers. There is no need to discuss the Glorious People's Republic of China's hacking and social media campaigns.
Look! A Tweet from Kim Kardashian!
Have gnu, will travel.
...where a very large part of what they spend our money on is maintaining and expanding their own power. Government for the people? ROFL.
This garbage was clearly written by some homosexual Japanese "people", and approved by someone seeking to undermine the Chinese government. msmash is probably from Taiwan.
All of you are racist, and because you are all racists, you cannot debate me and win. Your racism invalidates all of your arguments and validates all of mine.
May China be forever strong.
Social Media will be the downfall of most societies I expect.
Whether due to government manipulation, private interest manipulation, or merely coarsening the social discourse, Social Media really hasn't been a net benefit to society at all.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm pretty sure this is a fairly widespread phenomenon.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
So they found another answer to the question of what do you do when you have more people than jobs.
the MSM in USA then? Remind me how is this any different than the whole WMD fiasco of the Iraq war when all MSM touted the parties line (2 by name, but both war hawk) or the current Russia hacking scandal in which none of the MSM challenge or even question in the face of zero hard evidences. Personally I am deeply skeptical of any US based publication; only sources I'd trust are something like Wikileak or unauthorized leaks or there is no hidden narrative.
Every gamergate thread on /v/ is derailed into a hentai thread. Every time /pol/ starts discussing certain topics, the thread is flooded with Greedy Jew memes. It looks like strategic distraction to me.
Someday I hope the U.S. will have a real government, not just a bunch of people who act on personal interests.
Comrade , I don't know these Russian Hakars you speak of.
Comrade, remeber that the capitalist pig controlled Western media is blaming those poor innocent Russians. The very honest democracy loving Vladmir Putin would never undermine another government.
The study linked in the OP has nothing to do with fabricated-media posts; rather, it's about what social-media gets censored by the Chinese government (namely, calls to action and not mere criticism). In fact, the abstract of the linked study is entirely different from what's allegedly quoted in the OP. The linked abstract is actually this:
We offer the first large scale, multiple source analysis of the outcome of what may be the most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented. To do this, we have devised a system to locate, download, and analyze the content of millions of social media posts originating from nearly 1,400 different social media services all over China before the Chinese government is able to find, evaluate, and censor (i.e., remove from the Internet) the large subset they deem objectionable. Using modern computer-assisted text analytic methods that we adapt to and validate in the Chinese language, we compare the substantive content of posts censored to those not censored over time in each of 85 topic areas. Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Censorship is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future --- and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
First lesson that should be taught is not to trust anything on the web. I knew this before Al Gore even invented it and the great Robert Asprin/JRR Tokien debate, which I won. Believe half of what you see and nothing that you read/hear.
Harvard.
Not much different than right wing - left wing debate or office politics.
While the paper is a good let us (North America) judge China too harshly we should look at we allow in our own backyard.
2 million people generating 448 million posts a year? That's about two posts a working day per person. Either they are horribly inefficient, or one of these numbers is wrong. My guess, both are wrong.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
While we have to deal with global warming, an aging population that is going to put a huge demand on social security and Medicare, out of control medical costs, decling standards of living, globalization, automation, education, and many issues that are going affect all of us; folks are more concerned about stupid distraction issues: who can use what bathroom, funding planned parenthood, gay marriage, gun control, LGBTQFAG issues....
And seeing the elections over the last year, the LGBTQFAG community's support is inconsequential. The Dems need to start paying attention to the little guy again who has more important things to worry about than some whiny LGBTQFAG who wants to legislate bathroom use.
All praise for glorious leaders of China. This accusation is lacking of truth. Do not believe. Work hard for glory of people.
If you say I'm a bot/paid CIA/FSB/China shill, you are obviously a bot/paid shill. Ahh internet, where discussion is the equivalent of playing water polo in a septic tank.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I think that the political parties of the US, the dirty Dems and evil Reps, and folks with agendas like Facebook and google, are much more likely to do this.
Perhaps the 50c mafia should be sought in the USA, and see what comes of that.
Does Facebook have 50c mafia detectors and VW-like test-fakers?
We once asked who watches the watchers who watch the watchers. Given that watching is a form of detection, we might ask another question instead. Who detects the detectors who detect detectors? It is like a radar detector detector detector. Perhaps the infinitely recursive iterative acronyms such as gnu which stand's for "gnu's not unix", and whose mode in the limit reduces to "not unix" should be applied to a war between those who want to make slaves of the world via aggressive engineering of the human social graph as well as to those who they accuse.
I agree with you, and add this: Anyone who thinks that it's only the Chinese government that does things like this is either incredibly gullible, or just isn't paying attention. Then there's corporations and their paid shills. Just a couple of the myriad reasons I shun all social media and recommend that everyone else do the same.
So you're saying that people employed by a government to publicly support decisions the ruling group has already made aren't doing it to help spur insightful thinking?!
You, sir, have just blown my mind.
It shouldn't take more than 20,000 people to post 450 million items per year. That's a far cry from the
huge army of 2 million government drones. I'm assuming 100 posts per person per day, 6 day work weeks and about 4 weeks of vacation annually. That should be reasonably close for Chinese workers with low incomes.
Moreover, this is a mostly Chinese-domestic operation, unlike the Russian one which has shills posting on
Western news outlets' comments sections, to make it seem like Russian state biases and interests are widely
shared in the West.
A clear, open exposition of problems in a society increases the trust of the citizens to the government. Increased trust increases stability. The Chinese government likes stability. Foot, gun, tanks in the square.
Democrat Media Fabricates News Narratives for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument.
So basically CTR? Our own media has manipulated people to the point of thinking Trump is literally Hitler and rioting in the streets. What do we have to say about China?
Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
to do this kind of thing. Shoot down stuff that makes countries on the agenda look good and friendly, and blow stuff through the skies if it may make the U.S. look good and benign. But, that China would hire millions to do this? They have got _NOTHING_ on the U.S. when it comes to propaganda and social-media sabotage, and that they would hire millions, or even tens of thousands, is completely nuts to suggest.
So China is just like CNN?