Propaganda is what happens when a marketing campaign is run by the most transparently manipulative people in the world, namely politicians. We sort of expect propaganda to be a little stupid to begin with, but there are some examples that go beyond all our expectations and into the land of the hilarious. Like ...

7 China Pays Army of Internet Article Commenters

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In the mid-'00s the government of China faced a great challenge: They knew they couldn't block every single website or censor every single dissenting opinion on the Internet (as much as they'd like to) but they were also not crazy about people having the chance to say things like, "You know what? This whole communism thing kinda blows." Their solution: convince everyone that everything's fine by hiring masses of fake Internet commenters to tell them so.



Why didn't we think of this sooner?

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This massive Internet army is colloquially known as the 50 Cent Party, since they are purportedly paid 50 Chinese cents (about $US 0.07) for each comment made in support of the government. They mostly stick to news, city and college campus websites -- basically, their job consists of trolling dissenters into oblivion. The Guardian claims there are around 300,000 people working for the 50 Cent Party, at least a few of which had signed up under the wrong impression.

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"I'm advancing the party line of a communist nation like it's my birthday."

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Sometimes the 50 Centers are given specific missions or targets. For example, when a man in the city of Jiaozuo posted an "unfavorable comment" about the police on a local website, more than 120 fake commenters were sent to contain and change the direction of the debate. And it worked: within 20 minutes, most users were condemning the original poster. That's 20 minutes since the comment was first posted (at which point an alarm probably went off in their headquarters and they went into emergency mode).