6 ms·

Pro-China Astroturfers

53 points by ulysses 17y ago

jamesbressi 17y ago
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, no, not the fact that it is China, but the fact that it is happening. Just a digital form of propaganda and digital rogue social influential propaganda. But, I did find this part entertaining in the beginning "imagine how much worse it would be if the US government employed a couple hundred thousand people to "shape the debate" among online political forums. Crazy, right? What government would ever attempt it?" Arguably, the US does. Maybe not the US "government", but the employees of it (politicians, the President's cabinet, etc.), those looking to become employees of it, lobbyists and so on... An oversight of the last decade? e.g.'s: President's Cabinet - "Weapons of Mass Destruction", Healthcare Reform Bill - Both sides of the debate guilty, The Media - let's not even go there, And what was that fake grassroots incident on FaceBook that was exposed last year or earlier this year? Well, you can go ahead and add a million other examples.
- bilbo0s 17y ago
  Yeah. The article certainly IMPLIES that the US government does not do this. That's a little shady, but that's the way all these types of articles are written. A while ago, when I first got comfortable with Mandarin, I saw an article that mentioned the University of Wisconsin. Being an Alum, I decided to read through it. Now they characterized the UW, as an American university with 'ties to the American Military'. I thought '...WHAT?' Well I did a little research and found out what these 'ties' were, the ROTC program. ROTC? REALLY Chinese Nationalists? REALLY? Is that the best you can do? Anyway, you see how the Chinese Nationalists and their Government twisted that around. The same thing happens in the US. I was reading an article about how they tracked the Google Hackers to a University in China with . . . you guessed it . . . 'ties to the Chinese military'. I thought . . .'Oh lord, here we go again.'
- dkimball 17y ago
  I think that popular causes with centralized leadership typically have a mix of grassroots and astroturf support; the question is how much support is of which type. For Slashdot, or the Tea Party movement, or the Daily Kos, my guess is that the grassroots-to-astroturf ratio is _very_ high in favor of grass. I would be surprised if Russia doesn't employ a lot of astroturfing, but they also enjoy a lot of support from their population -- cf. http://www.slate.com/id/2197514/ http://www.slate.com/id/2197514/, and I've heard the rumor that Vladimir Putin is the only force keeping Russia from going Neo-Nazi. China, though, probably has a lot more astroturf than grass. I've had trouble determining how much of the passionate defense of China on the Internet is real (with the same mentality as the defenses of the late 1800s and early 1900s, probably -- a somewhat grating but thoroughly justifiable one), and how much is less than real... it looks like most of it, or at least most defense of the PRC government, is in the latter category. You don't see crowdsourced counterattacks and a memetic "Ode to a Grass Mud Horse" when the opposition is small.
- wheels 17y ago
  There are multiple documented cases of congressional staff doing whitewash edits in Wikipedia: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prompt_Wikipedia_investigation http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prom... http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice_workers_among_government_Wikipedia_vandals http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Just...
  - mbreese 17y ago
    And there was fallout from it. It happens here, yes, but it is very much frowned upon.
    - olefoo 17y ago
      Every modern american political campaign has an 'online action team' that will get flash alerts and talking points to help shape public perception of the news. Any news site will have people who are known partisans for points of view who are regularly involved and regurgitating the party line at every opportunity. We also have a huge contingent of people who promote commercial interests through social media. If you add up the shills, the various different formats of political astro-turfing and the subtle but universally understood sanctioning of some points of view as 'unserious'. I am not so sure that the Chinese are ahead of us in that game. We have a greater surface diversity of opinion, but those who step out of the bounds of the acceptable range of opinion are sanctioned in recognizable ways.
      - mbreese 17y ago
        It is true that there exists an entire spin machine for every campaign or cause. And yes, pundits do work for the news organisations. Same goes for every major corporation in the world. * gasp * The key here is that we all know who they are, and know that they represent a particular view that they are pushing. It's all about transparency. It isn't astroturfing unless you're pretending to be grassroots in the first place.
        17y ago
- megaduck 17y ago
  As somebody who has lived in both countries, I don't think this argument holds any water. While the U.S. government does indeed engage in propaganda, it's like comparing a candle to a forest fire. The Chinese government controls every news organization in China. Every single one. All television is state-run, and shows hours of pure propaganda every day, as well as entertainment programs that push certain agendas. Every book published requires government approval, and many are written for the sole purpose of propaganda. Opposition stances are strictly prohibited, across the board. Virtually every street on every town has large red banners and posters pushing the 'message of the day'. This digital form of propaganda is no different. Yes, the United States engages in abuses. However, they're not even close in scale, and therefore qualitatively quite different. Oh, and if anyone wants to see what this digital astroturfing looks like in the wild, I had some of it show up on my personal blog a while back: http://www.varvel.net/david/?p=9#comment-19 http://www.varvel.net/david/?p=9#comment-19
  - grandalf 17y ago
    All this means is that the US has managed to achieve a propaganda state without the explicit threat of force... Do you recall when GWB took office and long time members of the press core were kicked out if they asked tough questions? This happens all the time which is why you don't find certain stories/angles covered in the mainstream press. Consider that Tim Russert was considered the most hard nosed journalist because he had the gumption to ask a tough question or two... usually all he did was quote a few things the person had said in the past and ask them to explain their current claims (which usually turned their faces quite red). If this is hard nosed journalism we're all in deep trouble. Most news today is full of stories that make Americans feel morally superior... stories about how women are mistreated in all sorts of other countries... how politicians are corrupt, and how the economic opportunity stinks (elsewhere). There is also tremendous deference paid to titles and institutions in the US that should not be -- and would not be paid to titles and institutions of another country. Why, for example, should we take the term "Chairman of the Federal Reserve" seriously, but take some other country's "Minister of Economic Affairs" less seriously? All this is part of a media whose purpose is to help Americans feel that they have the moral high ground so that wars can be waged whenever necessary. The media doesn't have to overtly support a war -- in fact it is expected to question it (but by asking the wrong questions). There are a lot of things you decide not to say/think if you expect to be on a national TV show, quoted in a national paper, be appointed to a cabinet post, etc. Why the voluntary censorship? Because all that stuff is such a downer. Why worry about it when we can just order another burger and get free healthcare and feel good about our google searches because google is taking a stand against horrible china. Why would anyone fight these memes when they make everyone so happy? In the US the entrenched interests have been so successful, in fact, that we see all of this as perfectly normal and reasonable.... and, of course, we amplify differences with another country (like China) out of moral superiority and righteous indignation... Nothing makes us feel better than feeling sorrry for some poor victim of a propagandizing state, after all. This isn't a conspiracy (or a conspiracy theory) it's just what you get when entrenched interests flourish in a stable, prosperous country.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  But, I did find this part entertaining in the beginning "imagine how much worse it would be if the US government employed a couple hundred thousand people to "shape the debate" among online political forums. Crazy, right? What government would ever attempt it?" Political parties do this. ("Talking points") Even industry consortiums get into the act. How is this worse than distributing talking points and having your local lackeys span talk radio call-in shows? It's not. It's all horrible dreck.
nsoonhui 17y ago
When I read this article, I thought for a moment about the China apologists, and those who repeatedly jumped to China's defense whenever the CCP was casted in unfavorable lights on HN. And I laughed.
- garply 17y ago
  I don't think HN is the target demographic for the propaganda - the targeted demographic, I believe, would be more blue collar (if such a category can even accurately describe the social segmentation in China). I suspect most of the astroturfers don't even speak English.
  - Retric 17y ago
    Most young well educated people in China read and write at least some English.
    - garply 17y ago
      I'm well aware of this. I do not believe the propaganda is aimed at them. Violent revolution is not going to come from that demographic. What the government is worried about is the less-educated, general population having unfiltered access to certain 'unpleasant' pieces of information. The gov't is concerned about uprisings like what has been going on in Xinjiang. It is not concerned so much about some Chinese ibanker learning that a bunch of people died in Tiananmen Square in 89. The ibanker already knows that.
      - Retric 17y ago
        Tiananmen Square was a direct result of young well educated people taking a stand. Educated people are behind a lot of the world revolutions and I think the non violent revolution is probably more dangerous to China to the interests of Chinese leadership than a purely military coup. Anyway, my point is the lack of a language barrier means a site like HN is as dangerous to the Chinese government as better regulated site within their borders. While the government has significant military power, you can’t keep a billion people in check without some control over how they think. So even with the Great Firewall of China popular world opinion is still important because it shapes how people inside China think. PS: Also you can easily come up with a post that is corrosive to the Chinese government which does not touch any of the current third rail issues in such a way that automated software could detect what is going on. EX: An academic discussion of the economic costs of export oriented monetary policy where china’s is not even mentioned.
maxklein 17y ago
Great. Now anybody who takes a non-comformist line in the china debate is going to be accused of being paid by the Chinese government. Great way to go with making sure there is only one opinion on this issue.
- padmanabhan01 17y ago
  and who is to be blamed for that?
- exit 17y ago
  yeah, the chinese government should have thought through giving legs to that accusation..
- nsoonhui 17y ago
  You actually reminded me of someone: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221319 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221319
- dfranke 17y ago
  That sounds like something that someone on the Chinese government's payroll would say.
- jerf 17y ago
  That's just a fact of life on the Internet. If I had half the funds I've been accused of taking for various opinions I've come to on my own, I wouldn't need a real job.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  I'm with you Max. Unfortunately the Chinese didn't seem to think that honest opinion differences would result in the outcomes they wanted. Now anything pro-China is tainted. And rightly so, unfortunately.
  - raganwald 17y ago
    > Now anything pro-China is tainted. Why? An argument is an argument is an argument. If it holds water, let it carry the water. Saying that a pro-China argument is tainted just because there is a possibility that the person making the argument is paid to make the argument is fallacious, it's a kind of reverse Appeal to Authority. Of course, there are certain arguments that are tainted. For example,if someone says "I counted 280,000 signatures on this Kick Google Out of China petition," that argument is suspect. As is the "My friends and everyone I know see no value in Free Speech" anecdotal argument. And I'm sure there are some others that are subject to scrutiny. But if someone makes a good argument backed up with reasonable premises, it could come straight from their Premier for all I care.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
China, which allegedly employs 280,000 people to troll the Internet and make the government look good. ...Many more people do similar work as volunteers—recruited from among the ranks of retired officials as well as college students in the Communist Youth League who aspire to become Party members... That's truly a staggering number. Key up "but everybody does it" posts...
- jongraehl 17y ago
  queue up?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
chrischen 17y ago
Grass mud horse is a homonym for "fuck your mom" i believe. Anyways I don't think swearing in Chinese is that big of a deal. Everyone I knew as a kid said it and I said it to my parents all the time... Or maybe we were obscene.
mahmud 17y ago
They are known as the 50-cent party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
c1sc0 17y ago
The more important questions for hackers would be: are there ways to automtically detect astro-talk much like spam-mail?

53 points by ulysses 17y ago

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, no, not the fact that it is China, but the fact that it is happening. Just a digital form of propaganda and digital rogue social influential propaganda. But, I did find this part entertaining in the beginning "imagine how much worse it would be if the US government employed a couple hundred thousand people to "shape the debate" among online political forums. Crazy, right? What government would ever attempt it?" Arguably, the US does. Maybe not the US "government", but the employees of it (politicians, the President's cabinet, etc.), those looking to become employees of it, lobbyists and so on... An oversight of the last decade? e.g.'s: President's Cabinet - "Weapons of Mass Destruction", Healthcare Reform Bill - Both sides of the debate guilty, The Media - let's not even go there, And what was that fake grassroots incident on FaceBook that was exposed last year or earlier this year? Well, you can go ahead and add a million other examples.

bilbo0s 17y ago
Yeah. The article certainly IMPLIES that the US government does not do this. That's a little shady, but that's the way all these types of articles are written. A while ago, when I first got comfortable with Mandarin, I saw an article that mentioned the University of Wisconsin. Being an Alum, I decided to read through it. Now they characterized the UW, as an American university with 'ties to the American Military'. I thought '...WHAT?' Well I did a little research and found out what these 'ties' were, the ROTC program. ROTC? REALLY Chinese Nationalists? REALLY? Is that the best you can do? Anyway, you see how the Chinese Nationalists and their Government twisted that around. The same thing happens in the US. I was reading an article about how they tracked the Google Hackers to a University in China with . . . you guessed it . . . 'ties to the Chinese military'. I thought . . .'Oh lord, here we go again.'
dkimball 17y ago
I think that popular causes with centralized leadership typically have a mix of grassroots and astroturf support; the question is how much support is of which type. For Slashdot, or the Tea Party movement, or the Daily Kos, my guess is that the grassroots-to-astroturf ratio is _very_ high in favor of grass. I would be surprised if Russia doesn't employ a lot of astroturfing, but they also enjoy a lot of support from their population -- cf. http://www.slate.com/id/2197514/ http://www.slate.com/id/2197514/, and I've heard the rumor that Vladimir Putin is the only force keeping Russia from going Neo-Nazi. China, though, probably has a lot more astroturf than grass. I've had trouble determining how much of the passionate defense of China on the Internet is real (with the same mentality as the defenses of the late 1800s and early 1900s, probably -- a somewhat grating but thoroughly justifiable one), and how much is less than real... it looks like most of it, or at least most defense of the PRC government, is in the latter category. You don't see crowdsourced counterattacks and a memetic "Ode to a Grass Mud Horse" when the opposition is small.
wheels 17y ago
There are multiple documented cases of congressional staff doing whitewash edits in Wikipedia: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prompt_Wikipedia_investigation http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prom... http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice_workers_among_government_Wikipedia_vandals http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Just...
- mbreese 17y ago
  And there was fallout from it. It happens here, yes, but it is very much frowned upon.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    Every modern american political campaign has an 'online action team' that will get flash alerts and talking points to help shape public perception of the news. Any news site will have people who are known partisans for points of view who are regularly involved and regurgitating the party line at every opportunity. We also have a huge contingent of people who promote commercial interests through social media. If you add up the shills, the various different formats of political astro-turfing and the subtle but universally understood sanctioning of some points of view as 'unserious'. I am not so sure that the Chinese are ahead of us in that game. We have a greater surface diversity of opinion, but those who step out of the bounds of the acceptable range of opinion are sanctioned in recognizable ways.
    - mbreese 17y ago
      It is true that there exists an entire spin machine for every campaign or cause. And yes, pundits do work for the news organisations. Same goes for every major corporation in the world. * gasp * The key here is that we all know who they are, and know that they represent a particular view that they are pushing. It's all about transparency. It isn't astroturfing unless you're pretending to be grassroots in the first place.
      - 17y ago
megaduck 17y ago
As somebody who has lived in both countries, I don't think this argument holds any water. While the U.S. government does indeed engage in propaganda, it's like comparing a candle to a forest fire. The Chinese government controls every news organization in China. Every single one. All television is state-run, and shows hours of pure propaganda every day, as well as entertainment programs that push certain agendas. Every book published requires government approval, and many are written for the sole purpose of propaganda. Opposition stances are strictly prohibited, across the board. Virtually every street on every town has large red banners and posters pushing the 'message of the day'. This digital form of propaganda is no different. Yes, the United States engages in abuses. However, they're not even close in scale, and therefore qualitatively quite different. Oh, and if anyone wants to see what this digital astroturfing looks like in the wild, I had some of it show up on my personal blog a while back: http://www.varvel.net/david/?p=9#comment-19 http://www.varvel.net/david/?p=9#comment-19
- grandalf 17y ago
  All this means is that the US has managed to achieve a propaganda state without the explicit threat of force... Do you recall when GWB took office and long time members of the press core were kicked out if they asked tough questions? This happens all the time which is why you don't find certain stories/angles covered in the mainstream press. Consider that Tim Russert was considered the most hard nosed journalist because he had the gumption to ask a tough question or two... usually all he did was quote a few things the person had said in the past and ask them to explain their current claims (which usually turned their faces quite red). If this is hard nosed journalism we're all in deep trouble. Most news today is full of stories that make Americans feel morally superior... stories about how women are mistreated in all sorts of other countries... how politicians are corrupt, and how the economic opportunity stinks (elsewhere). There is also tremendous deference paid to titles and institutions in the US that should not be -- and would not be paid to titles and institutions of another country. Why, for example, should we take the term "Chairman of the Federal Reserve" seriously, but take some other country's "Minister of Economic Affairs" less seriously? All this is part of a media whose purpose is to help Americans feel that they have the moral high ground so that wars can be waged whenever necessary. The media doesn't have to overtly support a war -- in fact it is expected to question it (but by asking the wrong questions). There are a lot of things you decide not to say/think if you expect to be on a national TV show, quoted in a national paper, be appointed to a cabinet post, etc. Why the voluntary censorship? Because all that stuff is such a downer. Why worry about it when we can just order another burger and get free healthcare and feel good about our google searches because google is taking a stand against horrible china. Why would anyone fight these memes when they make everyone so happy? In the US the entrenched interests have been so successful, in fact, that we see all of this as perfectly normal and reasonable.... and, of course, we amplify differences with another country (like China) out of moral superiority and righteous indignation... Nothing makes us feel better than feeling sorrry for some poor victim of a propagandizing state, after all. This isn't a conspiracy (or a conspiracy theory) it's just what you get when entrenched interests flourish in a stable, prosperous country.
stcredzero 17y ago
But, I did find this part entertaining in the beginning "imagine how much worse it would be if the US government employed a couple hundred thousand people to "shape the debate" among online political forums. Crazy, right? What government would ever attempt it?" Political parties do this. ("Talking points") Even industry consortiums get into the act. How is this worse than distributing talking points and having your local lackeys span talk radio call-in shows? It's not. It's all horrible dreck.

nsoonhui 17y ago

When I read this article, I thought for a moment about the China apologists, and those who repeatedly jumped to China's defense whenever the CCP was casted in unfavorable lights on HN. And I laughed.

garply 17y ago
I don't think HN is the target demographic for the propaganda - the targeted demographic, I believe, would be more blue collar (if such a category can even accurately describe the social segmentation in China). I suspect most of the astroturfers don't even speak English.
- Retric 17y ago
  Most young well educated people in China read and write at least some English.
  - garply 17y ago
    I'm well aware of this. I do not believe the propaganda is aimed at them. Violent revolution is not going to come from that demographic. What the government is worried about is the less-educated, general population having unfiltered access to certain 'unpleasant' pieces of information. The gov't is concerned about uprisings like what has been going on in Xinjiang. It is not concerned so much about some Chinese ibanker learning that a bunch of people died in Tiananmen Square in 89. The ibanker already knows that.
    - Retric 17y ago
      Tiananmen Square was a direct result of young well educated people taking a stand. Educated people are behind a lot of the world revolutions and I think the non violent revolution is probably more dangerous to China to the interests of Chinese leadership than a purely military coup. Anyway, my point is the lack of a language barrier means a site like HN is as dangerous to the Chinese government as better regulated site within their borders. While the government has significant military power, you can’t keep a billion people in check without some control over how they think. So even with the Great Firewall of China popular world opinion is still important because it shapes how people inside China think. PS: Also you can easily come up with a post that is corrosive to the Chinese government which does not touch any of the current third rail issues in such a way that automated software could detect what is going on. EX: An academic discussion of the economic costs of export oriented monetary policy where china’s is not even mentioned.

maxklein 17y ago

Great. Now anybody who takes a non-comformist line in the china debate is going to be accused of being paid by the Chinese government. Great way to go with making sure there is only one opinion on this issue.

padmanabhan01 17y ago
and who is to be blamed for that?
exit 17y ago
yeah, the chinese government should have thought through giving legs to that accusation..
nsoonhui 17y ago
You actually reminded me of someone: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221319 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221319
dfranke 17y ago
That sounds like something that someone on the Chinese government's payroll would say.
jerf 17y ago
That's just a fact of life on the Internet. If I had half the funds I've been accused of taking for various opinions I've come to on my own, I wouldn't need a real job.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I'm with you Max. Unfortunately the Chinese didn't seem to think that honest opinion differences would result in the outcomes they wanted. Now anything pro-China is tainted. And rightly so, unfortunately.
- raganwald 17y ago
  > Now anything pro-China is tainted. Why? An argument is an argument is an argument. If it holds water, let it carry the water. Saying that a pro-China argument is tainted just because there is a possibility that the person making the argument is paid to make the argument is fallacious, it's a kind of reverse Appeal to Authority. Of course, there are certain arguments that are tainted. For example,if someone says "I counted 280,000 signatures on this Kick Google Out of China petition," that argument is suspect. As is the "My friends and everyone I know see no value in Free Speech" anecdotal argument. And I'm sure there are some others that are subject to scrutiny. But if someone makes a good argument backed up with reasonable premises, it could come straight from their Premier for all I care.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

China, which allegedly employs 280,000 people to troll the Internet and make the government look good. ...Many more people do similar work as volunteers—recruited from among the ranks of retired officials as well as college students in the Communist Youth League who aspire to become Party members... That's truly a staggering number. Key up "but everybody does it" posts...

jongraehl 17y ago
queue up?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

chrischen 17y ago

Grass mud horse is a homonym for "fuck your mom" i believe. Anyways I don't think swearing in Chinese is that big of a deal. Everyone I knew as a kid said it and I said it to my parents all the time... Or maybe we were obscene.

mahmud 17y ago

They are known as the 50-cent party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

c1sc0 17y ago

The more important questions for hackers would be: are there ways to automtically detect astro-talk much like spam-mail?