China Fakes 488M Social Media Posts a Year: Study

Just to give you a bit of local perspective: talking to the locals here in China (and actually a Chinese Malaysian guy I met too .. so it&#x27;s not just confined to the people agrarian paradise), they <i>ofcourse</i> know that this is happening, but they don&#x27;t envy our free for all either.<p>The article says &quot;a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates&quot; but of course that&#x27;s just one angle. The local perspective is seeing it mostly as an effort by the government to try to moderate sensationalism, things getting spun out of proportion and down right fabrications (ie. US-TV news, Buzzfeed et al)<p>They see our CNN having some 24hr coverage of a kitten stuck in a tree - which they will not stop till either half the nation is foaming at the mouth with rage at the government&#x27;s incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified

Bad reviews on Amazon lead to faked good ones.<p>Bad reviews on Glassdoor lead to faked good ones.<p>Bad reviews on Yelp lead to faked good ones.<p>Sometimes bad reviews are not fair or heavily exaggerated, sometimes bad reviews are from competitors. Bad reviews cannot be removed. Sometimes, faked good reviews is the only way to bring back a balanced view.<p>So, this seems to happen everywhere and to be the natural response of a self-regulating market. Means that we should be careful with user generated content in general, <i>also users</i> might have an hidden agenda.<p>Edit: Why the downvote? I am not saying that I like this, I just tried to find an explanation for a market behavior.

Political scientist Danie Stockmann, who studies the role of media in authoritarian regimes, has this to say about the Chinese situation:<p>&gt; New and market-based media require a certain degree of liberalization, because market-based media need to cater towards audiences in order to make a profit and new communication technologies are faster than propaganda officials in spreading information. But this expanded social space places pressure on the authoritarian state. As a result, China is also constantly building up its capacity to control media, mostly through institutional infrastructures, in order to maintain a roughly uniform flow of political information. Therefore, China responds to the challenges posed by market-based and new media by both opening up social spaces in media while maintaining control through institutional mechanisms.<p>More: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politicalcommunication.org&#x2F;newsletter_25_1_stockmann.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politicalcommunication.org&#x2F;newsletter_25_1_stockm...</a>

While it might sounds bad and it sure is, how is it that different than the 100&#x27;s of millions of &quot;sponsored content&quot; add&#x27;s, &quot;news articles&quot; and blog spam that 1000&#x27;s of companies spread through the internet each year?

&gt; 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.<p>Probably? How on earth do they reach this conclusion? Is this science?<p>&gt; 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.<p>I&#x27;m surprised that the article paints a picture of factories where masses of chinese slave workers are producing cheap comments.<p>It&#x27;s also very unlikely that they will have these kinds of sweatshops located at tax departments and courts.<p>Another simple explanation: As of 2009, 10 million people were civil servants within the Chinese government, and maybe, just maybe they are also sometimes bored at work and post cat pictures on the internet.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Civil_Service_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Civil_Service_of_the_People%27...</a>

I wonder how many of those are in this thread. There are quite a few posts in here written in good but not quite natural english, espousing various degrees of conciliatory attitudes towards the propaganda state.

Turns out it&#x27;s a Brave New World instead of 1984. And I am not surprised. A semi-totalitarian government based around ideology. If China&#x27;s idealistic goal is set to be achieving communism through socialism, then what&#x27;s better than vox populi?

Interesting. This makes me wonder about how many blog&#x2F;forum posts in the Western world that are written by PR agencies. Not working for governments, of course, but for corporations and NGOs.

Why don&#x27;t we study our own social media habits with as much scrutiny? I mean, if our version of the Chinese state is free market capitalism, how much of our own social media ecosystem is clogged with &quot;fake&quot; posts, otherwise known as content marketing? I bet we produce way more than 488M of that kind of crap each year.

honest question that seems more pointed than it is: how many anti-CCP&#x2F;China posts did the CIA sponsor last year?

&gt; <i>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.</i>

Spamming 400M posts is just casual business for any for-profit astroturfing companies.<p>I am not surprised if you can find another 800M posts is for soft advertising.

About time they learned from Western governments.

&quot;Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion.&quot; --Oswald Spengler, 1918<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Decline_of_the_West#Democracy.2C_media.2C_and_money" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Decline_of_the_West#Democr...</a>

How silly I was, thinking that there will be no jobs in the future due to automation. :-)

This entire thread seems to be overflowing with pro-authoritarian, emotionally reactive posts that are attempting to defend via diversion the actions in question. I count a couple dozen variations of intentionally trying to divert away from the actual topic. I&#x27;m surprised this thread isn&#x27;t killed yet given the quality of the postings occurring here.

So it´s like content ads in the western world? buy this, buy that? nice.

Well too bad nobody in China will ever get to read this post.

Do we have any data for USA, something I care more about?<p>ex: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;hbsanfr" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;hbsanfr</a>

I wonder if it&#x27;s actually effective, or just makes the people calling for it to be done, feel better.

As I know, Japan government also pays for posts in China. Maybe US does so.

Look over there at China! Nothing to see <i>here</i>, right?

This isn&#x27;t any different than Facebook (or government programs) &quot;curating&quot;&#x2F;filtering news&#x2F;media.

488M? Is that all?

Interesting - how many social media posts a year are faked by US?

How many have been in Weibo hmmm

What about all the Flash games out there?

Wait. Trump will soon pull the plug on China. Let&#x27;s see how they can survive this.<p>(gives them three years to balance trade with the US)