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.

Comments

they're not the only ones

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Social Media Sucks

[sycodon]

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.

Re:Social Media Sucks

[interkin3tic]

Social Media really hasn't been a net benefit to society at all.

If you're going to make unqualified statements like that, I'm going to need some quantification. I'm open to that possibility, but "Kids these days with their twitter and facebook is no dang good, and the Chinese are brainwashing them!!!" isn't very compelling.

If fake posters encourages skepticism about what you're being told, that could be useful. No news source is without bias, you're crazy if you think the alternative to Chinese posters trying to shape opinion is completely different from everyone watching the nightly news in the US during the cold war or any other war. Actually could be better: you can talk back to propaganda online in a way you can't with the tee vee propaganda.

Math doesn't check out

[OpenSourced]

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.