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Internet water army

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AnInternet water army(simplified Chinese:Võng lạc thủy quân;traditional Chinese:Võng lạc thủy quân;pinyin:Wǎngluò shuǐjūn) is a group of users who are paid to post online comments with vested interest on Chinese language websites. Internet water armies started in the early 2010s.[1]They post news, comments, gossip and disinformation on online platforms like Weibo, WeChat and Taobao, China's eBay-like platform.[2]In thisastroturfingtechnique forpublic relationsandmedia manipulation,online Chinese companies employ people to post onsocial mediato changepublic opinion.It has been developed into an industry in which a company specializing in internet water armies can earn 7.6 millionyuanwithin three months and has made over 2500 transactions.[2]The private Internet water army operations parallel the official50 Cent Partyinternet commentators hired by thegovernment of the People's Republic of Chinaor theChinese Communist Party(CCP) to spreadpropagandaanddisinformation.

The most prominent group isLi Yi Bar.[3]

Background

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Further information:Chinese information operations and information warfare

Governmental programs of social media manipulation are found worldwide. China's50 Cent Party(named from the 0.5 yuan payment per posting) trains and employs tens of thousands of online commentators to promote the PRCparty lineand control public opinion on microblogs,bulletin board systems,andchatrooms.[4]

These groups are mainly staffed by migrants, housewives and students.[5]

Name

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The water army metaphor refers to "the large number of people who are well organized to flood the Internet with purposeful comments and articles".[6]The Chineseetymologyofshuijunmeaning "navy" instead of "water army" is translated in the Shuijunshiwan thủy quân thập vạn (lit. "navy 100,000" ) company slogan: "Thousands of navy, for your assignment".[7][better source needed]

Adam Clark Estes describes the name as, "If the term 'Internet troll' conjures up unintimidating images of angry, acne-faced computer geeks, the phrase 'Internet water army' just sounds horrifying, like a force of besuited villains from a graphic novel. In reality, it's not that scary, but the continually booming business for paid spammers and mission-driven trolls is definitely unsettling."[8]

Xinhua News Agencyreported on a new name: "zombies" (jiangshiCương thi,transl.  "zombie"), who are paid followers ofSina Weibomicroblogs, and "can be bought and sold online for as little as 4 yuan (63 cents) a thousand".[9]

Features

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Paid posting involves thousands of individuals and posters using different online IDs.[10]Every day, around 40 percent of the trending hashtags on the social media platform[which?]are created by Internet water armies.[1]The content is usually well-prepared and there is a quality control team to check whether the postings meet the customer's standards.[10]Some companies hire Internet water armies to leave good reviews, and some singers or film stars also pay them to be fake followers onSina Weibo.The price for posting good comments and bad comments depends on the content. If there are negative reviews about a product or some gossip targeting a person, they must pay the Internet water army to screen and delete the negative comments.[10]

There is some difference between internet water army and 50 Cent Party. The concept of 50 Cent Party is narrower since it only refers to paid posters who deflect political discussions and post any positive and supporting reviews related to the central government or CCP. According to aHarvard Universitystudy in 2017, it was estimated that there were 448 million social media comments fabricated by the 50 Cent Party hired by the Chinese government at the time.[4]These comments avoid touching upon controversial and sensitive issues.[4]

Types

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There are three types of Internet water armies.[11]The first type voluntarily spreads posts promoting social justice,[11]the second is mainly hired by the government orstate-owned companiesto promote CCP propaganda,[11]and the third works for private companies, such as public relations companies, to pursue their own interests.[11]

Tactics

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A 2010 news story onChina Central Televisionlisted three customer services of Internet water armies: promotion of a specific product, company, person or message; slandering an adversary or their products or services, and helping delete negative or unfavorable posts or news articles.[12]

Pricing for Internet water armies tactics varies.Shanghai Dailyquoted Tang Jing, an employee of the Web PR company Shuijunshiwang.com, that prices range from a "basic zombie" for less than 5 yuan ($0.79) per 1,000 on the internet marketplaceTaobaoto an "A-level zombie" having "the characteristics of a real person, with a photo, self-description, tags of categories and its own fans" for 120 yuan ($18.86) per 5,000.[13]

Cheng Chen, acomputer scienceresearcher at theUniversity of Victoria,and three colleagues performed an academic study of Internet water army activities.[10][6]To learn how online Chinese ghostwriters operate, Cheng registered undercover with an Internet PR company that trained and paid him to make social media postings.[6]Each mission had a project manager; a trainer team that plans schedules, distributes shared user IDs, and maintains quality control; a posters team, typically college students and unemployed people, that gets 30 to 50 cents per validated post; a resources team that registers and collects online user IDs; and a PR team that maintains relationships with social media webmasters.[6]

Reasons

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Online marketing in China has become a big and profitable business and has spawned many Internet public relations agencies.[14]Internet water armies working for these PR firms not only advertise products but also remove any negative feedback that they find.[14]

Many celebrity agencies in the entertainment industry and their die-hard fans have been willing to spend a lot of money to hire Internet water armies to generate positive online reviews for their songs and movies.[1]The armies can range from a handful of people to hundreds, who often help celebrities inflate their social media accounts' followers with thousands of fake followers.[15]In addition, some entertainment companies use Internet water armies to bump up film ratings and smear a rival's reputation.[15]

Many people who join an Internet water army think online paid posting is a new type of online part-time job opportunity and an easy way to make money.[6]With the ubiquity of personal computers and smart phones along with easy-to-use microblogging platforms, the entry barrier is low. The income of Internet water armies is a primary reason why many people choose to join them,[16]more than 60% of Internet water army members earn more than a thousand yuan per month by posting and deleting reviews.[17]

Current affairs

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In 2017, Chinese Internet regulators imposed strict bans on hiring paid posters as a part of a sweeping campaign to tighten Internet control.[18]Police arrested more than 200 people in 40 water army cases and closed 5,000 paid poster accounts since May 2017.[19]In June, a man was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison and fined 920,000 yuan ($135,000) for generating fake transactions and product reviews on Taobao;[20]it is the first judicial case that a suspect was charged with this offense in China.[20]

In July 2018, the producer ofAsurasaid that their movie's ratings was brought down by fake comments on an influential rating platform.[21]

In August 2018, Guangzhou's latest move targeting the Internet water army was about a larger scale crackdown launched by China's public security authority, involving 77 suspects and 4 million yuan ($635,000).[22]

Legality

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Net marketing companies like Internet water armies sometimes operate on murky legal grounds, particularly underinternational law.The US companies Facebook and Digg sentcease and desistorders to the Australian company uSocial, which ignored them and continues to market "friends" and "votes".[23][24]

China, unlike many countries, has a strictcyber defamation law,and some Internet Water Army companies have been accused of violating it.[25]

Internet water army practices often result in privacy violations or damaged reputations, and the 2009 revision of China's Tort Liability Law stipulated that in such cases, "the victim has the right to inform the Internet service provider (ISP) to delete harmful postings and that the ISP must face joint liability for damages if it fails to act".[26]China'sState Council Information Officeannounced in 2011 that it "is working out laws to regulate the increasing numbers in the" Internet Army. "Wang Chen, director of the office, announced that the Chinese government has paid constant attention to the posters and commentators, who have been found damaging social order both in the real and the virtual world."[27]

In 2007, the cosmetics firm Doctor Bai and health-food company BiosTime both sued the consumer protection website 315ts.net for posting fake comments about their products. "Judges eventually ruled in the website's favor because there was no evidence to suggest the posts were not genuine."[28]According to a 2010China Dailyreport,Mengniu Dairydenied paying a Wangluo zhujun company to spread false rumors about dairy products of their competitorsYili Groupand Synbutra International.[29]TheShanghai Dailyreported in 2011 that the online shopping websiteTaobaoshut down over 200 Internet Water Army companies selling microblog followers.[13]

Detection

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Internet water armies are a big threat for cyber security.[16]

Some scholars adopted theDirichlet processmixture model (DPMM)-based GSP algorithm to detect Internet water armies from Tianya forum.[30]They used DPMM to effectively analyze Internet water army user behavior and use the sequential pattern mining algorithms to determine paid posters' accounts.[30]

An information technology engineer, blogging as Chen Chuanliang Peter, claimed to have developed software that differentiated paid blog "followers", and found that about 17 percent of followers on Sina's ten most popular microblogs "never interacted or responded to those they were following. In other words, they were zombies."[31]

Cheng Chenet al.chose a detection case study of online comments about the360 v. Tencentconflict between two major Chinese IT companies, each of which was suspected of paying for posts. In 2010, Qihoo, creator of360 Safeguard,claimed thatTencent's instant message clientTencent QQsecretly scanned users' hard drives.[6]After Tencent blocked 360 Safeguard users from using their messenger app, controversy erupted on social media websites. Cheng's researchers analyzed two large datasets of 360 v. Tencent postings, over 1000 comments from 200 users onSohu.comand over 20,000 comments from 500 users onSina.com.They concluded: "Although both 360 and Tencent claimed that they did not hire online paid posters, we now have strong evidence suggesting the opposite. Some special patterns are definitely unusual, e.g., many negative comments or replies came from newly registered user IDs but these user IDs were seldom used afterwards. This clearly indicates the use of online paid posters."[6]The researchers designed and validated detection software, and concluded the "test results on real-world datasets show[ed] very promising performance".[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^abcChen, Na (2018-03-12)."Guns for Hire: China's Social Media Militia Engage on Command".Sixth Tone.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  2. ^abZhang, Qibin."Yết bí" võng lạc thủy quân "Sinh ý kinh: Chỉ yếu cấp tiền thập ma tân văn đô năng phát (Disclosing the business" internet water army ": you pay, we post)".m.news.cctv.com.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-10-31.Retrieved2018-11-09.
  3. ^"China's online soldiers: Di Bar joins forces with 'Fan Girls' to target Hong Kong protesters".The Australian.20 Aug 2019.
  4. ^abcKing, Gary; Pan, Jennifer; Roberts, Margaret E. (August 2017)."How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument".American Political Science Review.111(3): 484–501.doi:10.1017/S0003055417000144.ISSN0003-0554.
  5. ^"Guangzhou cracks down on" internet water army ", China's version of fake followers".TechNode.2018-02-06.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-07-02.Retrieved2018-11-09.
  6. ^abcdefghChen, Cheng; Wu, Kui; Srinivasan, Venkatesh; Zhang, Xudong (2013-08-25). "Battling the internet water army".Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining.Niagara Ontario Canada: ACM. pp. 116–120.doi:10.1145/2492517.2492637.ISBN978-1-4503-2240-9.S2CID3444164.
  7. ^"Shuijunshiwan".2010-11-16. Archived fromthe originalon 2010-11-16.Retrieved2014-05-19.
  8. ^Estes, Adam Clark (2011-11-23)."The Spam-Slinging Habits of China's Internet Water Army".The Atlantic.Retrieved2021-10-31.
  9. ^"Zombies" and "phantom" fans haunt online statisticsArchived2013-07-30 at theWayback Machine,2011-11-22.
  10. ^abcd"Undercover Researchers Expose Chinese Internet Water Army".MIT Technology Review.November 22, 2011.Retrieved2018-11-09.
  11. ^abcdYang, Zhihuang."Võng lạc thủy quân loại hình, đa trọng tín dụng cập kỳ trị lý (Types and Governance of the Internet Water Army)".www.cssn.cn.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-12-15.Retrieved2018-12-13.
  12. ^"[ tiêu điểm phóng đàm ] yết bí võng lạc" thôi quảng "".news.cntv.cn.Retrieved2022-07-29.
  13. ^abShanghai Daily (2011).
  14. ^abSterling, Bruce."The Chinese online 'Water Army'".WIRED.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  15. ^abZhao, Li."Yết võng lạc thủy quân sản nghiệp liên vận tác nội tình: Xuất thụ phấn ti (how do Internet water armies operate)".www.xinhuanet.com.Archived fromthe originalon 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  16. ^abZheng, Lei (2013-10-01). "Social media in Chinese government: Drivers, challenges and capabilities".Government Information Quarterly.30(4): 369–376.doi:10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.017.ISSN0740-624X.
  17. ^""Võng lạc thủy quân" thấu lộ nhĩ bất tri đạo đích "Trám tiền đạo" (how do Internet water armies make money) "(in Chinese (China)).Retrieved2018-11-20.
  18. ^Lianzhang, Wang (2017-08-25)."China Bars Netizens From Commenting Anonymously".Sixth Tone.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  19. ^Liu, Yizhan."Khởi để" võng lạc thủy quân "Phạm tội hoạt động: Chỉ yếu khách hộ cấp tiền, thập ma nội dung đô năng phát (Criminal activities of" Internet water army ")".www.infzm.com.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  20. ^abNi, Xueying."Võng cấu xoát đan đệ nhất án tổ chức giả hoạch hình 5 niên 9 cá nguyệt (First judicial case,men imprisoned for generating fake transactions)".www.bjnews.com.cn.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  21. ^Yang, Yuan (August 2018)."China's battle with the 'internet water army'".Financial Times.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-09.
  22. ^Yang, Boyu."Quảng châu cảnh phương đả kích" võng lạc thủy quân "Hệ liệt án kiện yết khai hoàn chỉnh liên điều (Guangdong police cracks down on" Internet water army ")".www.chinanews.com.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-21.Retrieved2018-11-20.
  23. ^Facebook acts on follower tradeArchived2011-09-07 at theWayback Machine,BBC News, 20 November 2009.
  24. ^Michael Learmonth,Want 5,000 More Facebook Friends? That'll Be $654.30Archived2015-08-28 at theWayback Machine,Advertising AgeSeptember 02, 2009.
  25. ^"China's strict new cybersecurity law ensnares Japanese companies".Nikkei Asian Review.Archivedfrom the original on 2018-11-12.Retrieved2018-11-12.
  26. ^Mo (2010).
  27. ^Taobao takes aim at 'Internet Army'Archived2011-01-21 at theWayback Machine,Shanghai Daily,January 7, 2011.
  28. ^Duan YanThe invisible hands behind Web postingsArchived2012-01-11 at theWayback Machine,China Daily,2010-06-17.
  29. ^Chen Xiu,Dairy giant Mengniu in smear scandalArchived2012-01-10 at theWayback Machine,China Daily 2010-10-21.
  30. ^abLi, Dan; Li, Qian; Hu, Yue; Niu, Wenjia; Tan, Jianlong; Guo, Li (2014), "An Approach to Detect the Internet Water Army via Dirichlet Process Mixture Model Based GSP Algorithm",Applications and Techniques in Information Security,Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 82–95,doi:10.1007/978-3-662-45670-5_9,ISBN9783662456699
  31. ^Xinhua (2011).
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