China Fakes 488 Million Social Media Posts a Year

[Hum]

China’s government fabricates about 488 million social media comments a year -- nearly the same as one day of Twitter’s total global volume -- in a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates, according to a study.

 

Three scholars led by Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University who specializes in using quantitative data to analyze public policy, ran the first systematic study of China’s online propaganda workers, known as the Fifty Cent Party because they are popularly believed to be paid by the government 50 Chinese cents for every social media post.

 

Contrary to popular perception inside China, the Fifty Cent Party avoids engaging in debates with critics and doesn’t make fun of foreign governments. Instead, it mostly works to distract public attention away from hot topics by highlighting the positive, cheering the state, symbols of the regime, or the Communist Party’s revolutionary past.

 

"In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense -- stopping an argument is best done by distraction and changing the subject rather than more argument -- but this had previously been unknown,” King said in an e-mail.

 

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[George P Global Moderator]

Your "more" link isn't active.  

[Hum]

10 minutes ago, George P said:

Your "more" link isn't active.  

Pops right up here on Firefox

[Barney T. Administrators]

Works ok for me too.

[BinaryData]

Works for me too. Figures China would do that.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

Works for me just fine.

[+John. Subscriber¹]

Not surprising whatsoever 

[T3X4S]

I always thought Fifty Cent Party involved drinking champagne, in da club - "in there havin' sex, not into making love" & "toastin to tha good life"

[George P Global Moderator]

2 hours ago, Hum said:

Pops right up here on Firefox

It does now, it didn't when I first saw the post for some reason.

[Torolol]

remind me of rumors during Win 8 release which said that Microsoft's contracted PR firm also outsourcing to some Chinese social media posters to spread a quick "Good Reviews" about Windows 8.

[Hum]

488 million ?!  That's a lot of typing !

[perochan]

2 minutes ago, Hum said:

488 million ?!  That's a lot of typing !

China has 1.3 billions people so I think they all can share the work.

[Hum]

^ I wonder if a lot of the posts were computer generated ....

[Gotenks98]

If they can completely shutdown an MMO's chat system with a few of them I am pretty sure the 488 million is easily obtainable.