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

Re: Social Media Sucks

[thinkwaitfast]

Slashdot effect. At one time /. was successful. I learned many technical things here back in the day, particularly about the nuances and tradeoffs in operating system. There used to be very knowledgeable people who used this site.

Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People

15/16 slashdot lead stories right now are about people or companies. That would put /. in the small minds category

Re:Social Media Sucks

[hey!]

Depends on how you define "downfall".

The trick with tyranny, as with so many other things, is to get someone else to do most of the work of maintaining it. The Chinese regime has got this down to a science.

For example if there were a clear and hard limit as to how far you can go with free speech, people would be going right up to that limit and they'd constantly be struggling with people who wander over the line. So in China they keep the exact line vague so most normal people avoid going anywhere near where the line might be drawn.

This particular story shows how distraction is a powerful tool of tyranny. The more people are focused on viral nonsense the less they're focused on things that might challenge the regime.