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's not just confined to the people agrarian paradise), they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either.
The article says "a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates" but of course that'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)
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's incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified
The Chinese are constantly brainwashed to believe that yes, it's true, China is a dictatorship and other countries aren't (this fact cannot be totally hidden no matter how much their firewall tries to block keywords like 'democracy') ... but that's not really a problem and democracy vs dictatorship are just two different styles with neither being better than the other. China has dictatorship and America has democracy but that's fine because China's needs are different, etc.
Any student of international history knows full well that this viewpoint is complete crap. The track record of totalitarian dictatorships is awful. But don't underestimate the power of total information control to warp and distort people's minds. I've encountered a Chinese person who believed they are well educated and understood the West well, and then came out with ridiculous statements like "people in the west have to wait a week for emergency medical care" as justification for why a "paternal" government is not so bad really.
The local perspective of Chinese people is essentially worthless for judging what's actually going on in China. They are fed a constant diet of lies, and unlike in other parts of the world their access to organised debunking of those lies is severely restricted. They can't even judge what's going on by measuring the opinion of those around them because the government subtly distorts that too (as seen by this article).
> they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either
Try talking to some Falun Gong, anyone in Tibet, family of those killed in accidents such as the Tianjin chemical explosion, or family of victims of police violence.
These people have no voice and no peace. They can only look forward to dark prisons if they speak up.
The question is how much are the local views influenced by the government and also how much people are willing to disagree with the government view.
The local perspective you present, is a good example of a perspective which sounds like it endorses government activity but also identifies it as a case of government suppression. It says noting as a personal opinion.
I'm not sure that Chinese people are "understandably" horrified at CNN. I actually think theres a big cultural gap in understanding between both countries, perpetuated part by both governments.
Either way, its government propaganda of news set against a backdrop of fear and conformity. That means that the very idea of presenting a 'local perspective' is one intimately linked to government control. Its nothing to do with kittens on CNN.
You don't outright say it, but the way you wrote this seems to be saying that government controlled news ain't that bad compared with CNNs 24hr coverage of kittens. What do you think, personally?
This is also what they're telling a foreigner. Even a Chinese Malaysian may identify himself as Chinese and automatically react defensively against criticism of the regime, or (like you seem to) might have been intrigued by the idea of this argument to the point of believing it.
I have also travelled China and speak Mandarin. I have seen this view, and have discussed and pondered it a fair bit, but I've concluded it's wrong, and dangerously so. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I'm no doubt wrong about many things. Every society gets indoctrinated with it's own mix bag of beliefs and taboos. I went to a talk in Bejing discussing all the reasons why China's economy was fantastic and stable. It did not seem they could even consider the possibility things might not. They were even optimistic about climate change. I had to ask someone if it was the moon or the sun I was looking at in the sky one day.
One of my opinions is that when the world breaks out into a global slaugtherfest like WW2, it becomes essential for the survivors to research the causes of such an event with the explicit goal of of ensuring that it won't happen again. As far as I have seen, not a single society anywhere has done this, rather, we have minutes of silence to remember those who took part in the heroic massacre. I would not kid myself that I wouldn't also torture and kill if I was placed in a horrible enough environment, so I have put explicit effort into reading the works of Khaneman and others. Milgram's Experiment, Stanford prison experiment, etc. I was watching a fire start in a bin outside our library the other day, counting all the people walking by as smoke came out, some of them throwing rubbish in and walking off. Fortunately I'd read about bystander apathy so I just went and told someone and they put it out.
The "moderating sensationalism" view is clearly wrong when one looks at the list of search items blocked. Let's see... Top result for Tiananmen massacre in Mandarin produces no results (六四), in English, the top result is "Tiananmen massacre a myth". How can China become a better place when it's people are forbidden from even researching such events?
Another fascinating delusion in China is the distinction between "Chinese" and "foreigner", and then perhaps "Japanese" will be refereed to separately, because fuck Japan. It's quite difficult to explain. In their minds (this is all "statistically speaking" of course", everyone takes on the "Chinese" or "foreigner" label and thus they take on distinct beliefs and behaviours associated with them. It's not trivial racism or anything, actually, they are typically more polite to "foreigners", which they call me even in my home country. One of the scary things that comes from this is the hard wired belief that "Taiwan is China", despite being and separated and independent for 70 years. I have tried explaining this very carefully to many Chinese, and they will understand each point individually, but at the end of the discussion they say "but Taiwan is China!" and continue on with their insanity. Meanwhile Taiwan has the day to day trouble of trying not to be massacred by China wanting to "save" them and "bring them back" (actually things I've heard from Chinese). It is as if one had a ex that still believed they were together and the only thing stopping them from rape was the lingering threat of getting beating up by the slightly less deranged partner (the USA). Of course, Chinese people happily assure me that China would never use force in resolving this. Actually, the official stance says they would only use force if Taiwan officially claimed independence, and the idea of Taiwan actually being independent is unpalatable, so everything is fine. So in summary, I have zero confidence when Chinese people assure me this censorship is all for the greater good.
"My neighbor likes to yell, so I yell louder so I don't have to hear what they're saying. One day, there was a fire in my house, they were yelling for me to get out, but... I just yelled back and almost died."
Answer is not to fight noise with noise, or to hide from reality because it's not Disney Land. There is no easy answer, but propaganda is the wrong answer.
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.
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, also users might have an hidden agenda.
Edit: Why the downvote? I am not saying that I like this, I just tried to find an explanation for a market behavior.
> Bad reviews on Amazon lead to faked good ones.
>
> Bad reviews on Glassdoor lead to faked good ones.
>
> Bad reviews on Yelp lead to faked good ones.
Where do you get the idea that bad reviews somehow cause faked good ones? If these web sites allow fake reviews, why shouldn’t we expect fake good reviews just because fake good reviews make money for vendors?
This is how books work: The authors or publishers get other authors to give them good reviews that appear on the book jacket. Nobody waits around for a bad review before lining up good reviews.
> 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.
There is zero value in a merchant’s self-assessment of what constitutes a “balanced” view. I don’t know what you are saying here.
> 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, also users might have an hidden agenda.
A “market” where bad and good actors can lie without consequences is a terrible market. It is in no way representative of how markets in general work or ought to work. “Self-regulating markets” are nearly always terrible.
> Edit: Why the downvote? I am not saying that I like this, I just tried to find an
> explanation for a market behavior.
You appear to be saying that everything is fine with markets full of fraud. I suggest to you that most of the things you describe as an explanation, most people consider deep, deep problems that will eventually render these markets useless.
Try reframing your explanation as problems that need solving for these markets to thrive.
Another study also states that Chinese people don't trust what they read; they trust their friends', relatives', etc. opinion. This is why you don't see wandering Asian tourists - they tend to visit what they know it's going to worth is, based on, well, gossip.
And sadly, I'm leaning towards this myself, finding the amazon 5* reviews more and more useless - although the same goes for most 1* reviews as well, those are mostly angry costumers with a bad luck.
Political scientist Danie Stockmann, who studies the role of media in authoritarian regimes, has this to say about the Chinese situation:
> 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.
While it might sounds bad and it sure is, how is it that different than the 100's of millions of "sponsored content" add's, "news articles" and blog spam that 1000's of companies spread through the internet each year?
Yes, an authoritarian state that murders and disappears people and then undermines resistance by subtly adjusting the dialogue of its citizens is just like a marketing agency.
Exactly the same, now I consider it more.
Forgive the hyperbole, but I think it does the suffering caused by their regime a great disservice to compare it to sponsored ads.
Companies that waste all their money on blog spam tend to get washed out of the system pretty fast by bankruptcy (unless they're spamming because they have no alternative e.g. generic viagra spammers). You do need some sort of actual valuable product to survive. And there are large, well organised efforts to combat spam on the internet. As for fake news, well, I'm unaware of any popular news sources that routinely mix real editorial content with fake articles. Sometimes you do get sponsored articles but they are labelled.
Whereas here, the Chinese government cannot go bankrupt - it will continue forever. The injected opinions are not labelled. And the goal is not to sell you some happy pills, it's to confuse and distract the population away from their own corruption and ineptitude.
> 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.
Probably? How on earth do they reach this conclusion? Is this science?
> 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.
I'm surprised that the article paints a picture of factories where masses of chinese slave workers are producing cheap comments.
It's also very unlikely that they will have these kinds of sweatshops located at tax departments and courts.
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.
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.
They may or may not be in this thread, but pg mentioned years back that there are often a lot of suspect new accounts pushing official lines on stories involving China.
Turns out it's a Brave New World instead of 1984. And I am not surprised. A semi-totalitarian government based around ideology. If China's idealistic goal is set to be achieving communism through socialism, then what's better than vox populi?
I'm not even sure if they still have any communist goal, it looks just like any other authoritarian government now, it's probably only communist by name.
Interesting. This makes me wonder about how many blog/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'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 "fake" posts, otherwise known as content marketing? I bet we produce way more than 488M of that kind of crap each year.
If you mean the Chinese Intelligence Agency, they aren't anti-CCP. If you mean the Central Intelligence Agency, then we have no evidence that they are, and it is highly likely that they wouldn't bother. What is in it for the USA to destabilize China and/or overthrow the CPP? A failed state with 1.3 billion people would be a huge headache.
I can't remember where I read it, but I think the CIA is prohibited from generating propaganda that could influence people in the US, e.g. English-language internet posts.
> 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.
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'm surprised this thread isn't killed yet given the quality of the postings occurring here.
[+] [-] optforfon|9 years ago|reply
The article says "a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates" but of course that'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)
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's incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified
[+] [-] sievebrain|9 years ago|reply
The Chinese are constantly brainwashed to believe that yes, it's true, China is a dictatorship and other countries aren't (this fact cannot be totally hidden no matter how much their firewall tries to block keywords like 'democracy') ... but that's not really a problem and democracy vs dictatorship are just two different styles with neither being better than the other. China has dictatorship and America has democracy but that's fine because China's needs are different, etc.
Any student of international history knows full well that this viewpoint is complete crap. The track record of totalitarian dictatorships is awful. But don't underestimate the power of total information control to warp and distort people's minds. I've encountered a Chinese person who believed they are well educated and understood the West well, and then came out with ridiculous statements like "people in the west have to wait a week for emergency medical care" as justification for why a "paternal" government is not so bad really.
The local perspective of Chinese people is essentially worthless for judging what's actually going on in China. They are fed a constant diet of lies, and unlike in other parts of the world their access to organised debunking of those lies is severely restricted. They can't even judge what's going on by measuring the opinion of those around them because the government subtly distorts that too (as seen by this article).
[+] [-] studentrob|9 years ago|reply
Try talking to some Falun Gong, anyone in Tibet, family of those killed in accidents such as the Tianjin chemical explosion, or family of victims of police violence.
These people have no voice and no peace. They can only look forward to dark prisons if they speak up.
[+] [-] okc|9 years ago|reply
The local perspective you present, is a good example of a perspective which sounds like it endorses government activity but also identifies it as a case of government suppression. It says noting as a personal opinion.
I'm not sure that Chinese people are "understandably" horrified at CNN. I actually think theres a big cultural gap in understanding between both countries, perpetuated part by both governments.
Either way, its government propaganda of news set against a backdrop of fear and conformity. That means that the very idea of presenting a 'local perspective' is one intimately linked to government control. Its nothing to do with kittens on CNN.
You don't outright say it, but the way you wrote this seems to be saying that government controlled news ain't that bad compared with CNNs 24hr coverage of kittens. What do you think, personally?
[+] [-] pmarreck|9 years ago|reply
I mean, we already know that China is both governmentally AND culturally OK with pervasive deceit:
http://shanghaiist.com/2015/11/19/study_says_china_least_hon...
https://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/do-the-chin...
http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake-economic-data/
Lying is, and should be, universally reviled.
[+] [-] allemagne|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brendyn|9 years ago|reply
One of my opinions is that when the world breaks out into a global slaugtherfest like WW2, it becomes essential for the survivors to research the causes of such an event with the explicit goal of of ensuring that it won't happen again. As far as I have seen, not a single society anywhere has done this, rather, we have minutes of silence to remember those who took part in the heroic massacre. I would not kid myself that I wouldn't also torture and kill if I was placed in a horrible enough environment, so I have put explicit effort into reading the works of Khaneman and others. Milgram's Experiment, Stanford prison experiment, etc. I was watching a fire start in a bin outside our library the other day, counting all the people walking by as smoke came out, some of them throwing rubbish in and walking off. Fortunately I'd read about bystander apathy so I just went and told someone and they put it out.
The "moderating sensationalism" view is clearly wrong when one looks at the list of search items blocked. Let's see... Top result for Tiananmen massacre in Mandarin produces no results (六四), in English, the top result is "Tiananmen massacre a myth". How can China become a better place when it's people are forbidden from even researching such events?
Another fascinating delusion in China is the distinction between "Chinese" and "foreigner", and then perhaps "Japanese" will be refereed to separately, because fuck Japan. It's quite difficult to explain. In their minds (this is all "statistically speaking" of course", everyone takes on the "Chinese" or "foreigner" label and thus they take on distinct beliefs and behaviours associated with them. It's not trivial racism or anything, actually, they are typically more polite to "foreigners", which they call me even in my home country. One of the scary things that comes from this is the hard wired belief that "Taiwan is China", despite being and separated and independent for 70 years. I have tried explaining this very carefully to many Chinese, and they will understand each point individually, but at the end of the discussion they say "but Taiwan is China!" and continue on with their insanity. Meanwhile Taiwan has the day to day trouble of trying not to be massacred by China wanting to "save" them and "bring them back" (actually things I've heard from Chinese). It is as if one had a ex that still believed they were together and the only thing stopping them from rape was the lingering threat of getting beating up by the slightly less deranged partner (the USA). Of course, Chinese people happily assure me that China would never use force in resolving this. Actually, the official stance says they would only use force if Taiwan officially claimed independence, and the idea of Taiwan actually being independent is unpalatable, so everything is fine. So in summary, I have zero confidence when Chinese people assure me this censorship is all for the greater good.
Orwell's essay on freedom of the press (which was edited out of the first edition): http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html
[+] [-] nxzero|9 years ago|reply
Answer is not to fight noise with noise, or to hide from reality because it's not Disney Land. There is no easy answer, but propaganda is the wrong answer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
[+] [-] greenspot|9 years ago|reply
Bad reviews on Glassdoor lead to faked good ones.
Bad reviews on Yelp lead to faked good ones.
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.
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, also users might have an hidden agenda.
Edit: Why the downvote? I am not saying that I like this, I just tried to find an explanation for a market behavior.
[+] [-] braythwayt|9 years ago|reply
This is how books work: The authors or publishers get other authors to give them good reviews that appear on the book jacket. Nobody waits around for a bad review before lining up good reviews.
There is zero value in a merchant’s self-assessment of what constitutes a “balanced” view. I don’t know what you are saying here. A “market” where bad and good actors can lie without consequences is a terrible market. It is in no way representative of how markets in general work or ought to work. “Self-regulating markets” are nearly always terrible. You appear to be saying that everything is fine with markets full of fraud. I suggest to you that most of the things you describe as an explanation, most people consider deep, deep problems that will eventually render these markets useless.Try reframing your explanation as problems that need solving for these markets to thrive.
[+] [-] pmlnr|9 years ago|reply
And sadly, I'm leaning towards this myself, finding the amazon 5* reviews more and more useless - although the same goes for most 1* reviews as well, those are mostly angry costumers with a bad luck.
[+] [-] sievebrain|9 years ago|reply
Massive government subversion of communication channels through the injection of fake opinions is not natural and has nothing to do with markets.
[+] [-] lvs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bromskloss|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jboynyc|9 years ago|reply
> 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.
More: http://www.politicalcommunication.org/newsletter_25_1_stockm...
[+] [-] dogma1138|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmanser|9 years ago|reply
Exactly the same, now I consider it more.
Forgive the hyperbole, but I think it does the suffering caused by their regime a great disservice to compare it to sponsored ads.
[+] [-] sievebrain|9 years ago|reply
Companies that waste all their money on blog spam tend to get washed out of the system pretty fast by bankruptcy (unless they're spamming because they have no alternative e.g. generic viagra spammers). You do need some sort of actual valuable product to survive. And there are large, well organised efforts to combat spam on the internet. As for fake news, well, I'm unaware of any popular news sources that routinely mix real editorial content with fake articles. Sometimes you do get sponsored articles but they are labelled.
Whereas here, the Chinese government cannot go bankrupt - it will continue forever. The injected opinions are not labelled. And the goal is not to sell you some happy pills, it's to confuse and distract the population away from their own corruption and ineptitude.
[+] [-] DominikR|9 years ago|reply
Probably? How on earth do they reach this conclusion? Is this science?
> 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.
I'm surprised that the article paints a picture of factories where masses of chinese slave workers are producing cheap comments.
It's also very unlikely that they will have these kinds of sweatshops located at tax departments and courts.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Service_of_the_People%27...
[+] [-] MaxfordAndSons|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semiapies|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aavotins|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] realusername|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmlnr|9 years ago|reply
(source: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/cartoon-blog/amusing-ours... )
[+] [-] messel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jensen123|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisivka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kristine1975|9 years ago|reply
Why not for governments?
[+] [-] ZoF|9 years ago|reply
Why? That's pretty naive.
[+] [-] prestonpesek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjshepard|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Luc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CountSessine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephengillie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] est|9 years ago|reply
I am not surprised if you can find another 800M posts is for soft advertising.
[+] [-] otaviokz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West#Democr...
[+] [-] js8|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Polarity|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zarlink|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unlinker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puppetmaster3|9 years ago|reply
ex: http://tinyurl.com/hbsanfr
[+] [-] Kristine1975|9 years ago|reply