Chinese trolls write 488 million fake social media posts a year and don't even earn 50 cents for it

[yuiyoshida]

While China's Communist Party has more than 87 million members, it turns out that the most productive party in China may just be the infamous "50 Cent Party" (五毛党, wǔmáodǎng).

"50-centers" or wumao are popularly imagined to be feckless netizens who earn 0.5 kuai per pro-China post that they make online at the behest of government censors. If this were true, then they have likely amassed quite a fortune by this time, with the CCP giving them 244 million yuan yearly by our count.

That's based on a recent study led by Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University, which found that the Chinese government fabricates about 488 million social media comments a year. Half on government sites, and the other half on Chinese social media, where one of every 178 posts is authored at the behest of the government (seems a little low).

Utilizing leaked documents from an internet propaganda county office in Jiangxi, this first-ever systematic study of China's "50 Cent Party," found out that apart from their obvious productivity, pretty much everything we thought we knew about the wumao is wrong.

"The content of [50-center] posts was completely different than what had been assumed by academics, journalists, activists, and participants in social media,” Jennifer Pan, an assistant professor at Stanford and one of the report’s authors, told Foreign Policy. “They — and we before we did this study — turned out to be utterly wrong”

more...http://shanghaiist.com/2016/05/20/china_fakes_488_million_posts_yearly.php

[merrily]

1. Look at those expressions! Why did you post that? Now, I'll have to feel sorry for the DU trolls.

Why, I oughtta.....

[w4rma]

2. Hillary PAC Spends $1 Million to ‘Correct’ Commenters on Reddit and Facebook

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/21/hillary-pac-spends-1-million-to-correct-commenters-on-reddit-and-facebook.html

[FLPanhandle]

4. Per the article "stopping an argument is best done by distraction and changing the subject"

I hope you got paid $.50 for changing the topic to Hillary?

[sibelian]

17. Hah! Well, there you go.

Surprised, me?

[Hortensis]

20. Lol. One more and he'll have enough for a candy bar.

pre-tax anyway Seriously, interesting little article, Yuiyoshida. Thank you.

[LanternWaste]

5. I hope you spend your newly earned .50¢ on something special.

I hope you spend your newly earned .50¢ on something special, despite that your article is heavy on allegation, yet lacking in both source and substance.

[w4rma]

6. Be nice to Hillary Clinton online — or risk a confrontation with her super PAC

Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html

[Arugula Latte]

16. We all love and admire Dear Leader greatly!

Dear Leader will be the finest and most upstanding president our homeland has ever been honored to elect!

[Hortensis]

21. Be fair. The only counter to disinformation is

information. They are entitled to counter the millions of lies and smears directly and indirectly spread by the character assassination industry--as long as they do it honestly. In fact, since she has set herself up as a national leader, they actually have a duty to the public to try to protect it from these attempts to corrupt their decision making.

[Jester Messiah]

8. It's good that she pays better, I guess! n/t

[snooper2]

9. keep it in GD-Pee where it belongs

[Egnever]

13. It would be stupid not to in todays age

Don't you think?

[nolabels]

3. Click on the link and read the comments below, that is also very interesting

Thanks yuiyoshida, that's some cool stuff

[yuiyoshida]

18. kochira koso

you're welcome.

[nolabels]

22. To think about it in another way

The old proverb about the whole city having to stick their fingers in the dike wall so as not to flood the town is analogous.

Sooner or later that thing won't be stopped. And it's seems to be happening everywhere to one degree or another. Stopping information on these machines we are using doesn't sound like a winning strategy

[guillaumeb]

7. Obviously some of them are also writing on political sites in the US also.

Witness the huge number of new posters who seem to be supporting one candidate.

[Urchin]

10. So?

Why can't people be paid to post stuff online?

Can't people be paid to write newspaper articles?

Can't people be paid to write books and magazine articles that espouse views the author was paid to promote?

I suspect you cannot control such behavior without also opening the door censoring honest opinions that might differ from what the majority want to hear.

If such control had been exercised over the printing press in the Renaissance, not only would reports of ships sailing over the edge of the world into an abyss have been banned (to help ensure the continuation of land trade routes between Europe and Asia), but so would have been the heliocentric model of the solar system.

[w4rma]

12. Its because you can't change a professional troll's 'mind'. They simply do what they are told to do.

So, that idiot, who you think is posting things that they honestly believe, and whose 'mind' you think might be able to be changed, is just posting those frustrating things because they are being paid to do so, regardless of reality.

These professional trolls *always* are, eventually, forced to post things that no one can possibly believe. They muddy the public discourse and harm democracy.

[Egnever]

14. How is it different than an advertisement?

I guess I get the fact that you don't know it is a paid advertisement makes it different but I don't see how it could conceivably be stopped.

Good rule of thumb don't believe everything you read on the internet.

[w4rma]

19. Exactly. That dishonesty of not being open about who you are and also funding.

Where does the funding come from? Really, just about every problem in politics comes down to where funding is sourced from and the strings attached to that funding.

[Urchin]

23. If you think they honestly believe what they post

when they don't believe it themselves, is what you believe their fault, especially when you know people are free on the net to profess to believe things they really do not?

We should all realize that what we read on the net is untrustworthy.

And that is good.

Because it places limits the net's ability to replace those people and businesses whose jobs have been to supply us with reliable information.

As for what you see on the net--consider it in the same light as when absorbing a book or film that is fiction. You don't believe what's portrayed actually happen, but the work of fiction serves as a playground for different ideas.

[nc4bo]

11. Whoa boy!

I, NEVER in a million years, would have guessed that

[Rex]

15. The Communist party should be worried. Bad enough when you live in a two party system.

I can only imagine the hell of living in a one party, totalitarian society.