Infiltrators infest the net

 

Opinion-formers are being paid to guide web discussions

CYBERSPACE IS THE NEW open mic for the spread of free speech. These days, there are many countries where authoritarian governments go to great lengths to stop members of the public sharing

a) their political views,

b) their exposes of official corruption, and

c) blurry pictures of themselves in their underpants.

But now people can do all three important activities on the Internet thanks to Twitter, Facebook and so on.

Realizing this, government officials are trying to explain what these services are to people like Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a religious leader. The old fella apparently doesn’t do a lot of web-surfing, believing that “the Evil Hand of the Great Satan” can be seen in new-fangled inventions such as the computer, the mobile phone, the wheel, fire and so on.

He and other despotic types want to follow the lead of the Chinese government in having a secret army of paid Internet surfers who log on to websites to leave postings pushing the government line.

Many people are worried about this, so I called a friend in Beijing who spends a lot of time in chatrooms.

“It’s no sweat,” she said. “Just hang out in a chatroom for a while and you can easily tell the difference between real netizens and official opinion-pushers.”

So I went to chatrooms in a variety of countries and noticed that real netizens tend to be rather free-thinking people with an astonishingly narrow range of interests (whatever the top news story is, plus babes, movies, babes, gadgets, babes, babes, etc).

Occasionally someone would log on and try to divert the discussion. Here’s a re-creation of an infiltrated chat.

Real posting:

“The army is shooting peaceful demonstrators! 1 just fell at the feet of 1 of a guy I follow on Twitter!”

Paid pro-govt posting:

“Many people in the crowd are fainting with joy, blood bursting from their thrilled hearts as they die of loyalty.”

Real Posting:

“Help! Govt agents R bashing down my door 2 arrest me.”

Paid pro-govt posting:

“Representatives of the authorities are fanning out to advise us of our many inalienable rights, such as the right to have our non-conformist views corrected through re-education at no cost.”

Real posting:

“Any 1 know where I can get a pirate download of the new Transformers movie?”

Paid pro-govt posting:

“I find Western movies filled with undesirable qualities, such as fun, watchability and insufficiently clothed persons, things of no interest to right-thinking citizens.”

Real posting:

“I heard Transformers 2 rocks and Megan Fox is totally HOT.”

Paid pro-govt posting:

“Maybe so, yet it cannot be of as much interest as the 23-volume DVD series called Ideologically Sound Speeches. I will buy a dozen copies, as should we all.”

Real posting:

“Anyone got a password for the members’ area of the Megaboobs website?”

Paid pro-govt posting:

“I visited and found it to be of no interest. Surfers’ time would be much better spent viewing the gallery of congress members. How inspiring to gaze on such wise faces!”

Real posting:

“So, are you a paid pro-govt poster?”

Paid pro-govt poster:

“Of course not. What makes you think that?”

Real posting:

“You don’t talk about babes.”

Paid pro-govt posting:

“I am extremely interested in babies. The children of the proletariat are our future leaders.”

At this point, we all log off.

 

Technorati Tags: china,internet,infiltration,opinion-formers

Comments

[fardel]

real posting

We can

Paid pro-govt posting:

We can too ( i.e we wiil can you to R e x 84 )

real posting

freedom of speech

Paid pro-govt posting:

We are the country of free speech (I.e my list is not long enough to fill my camps, feel free to increase my suspects's list)

[Dancer]

Doesn't sound like a difficult job,
just the usually brainless government mumble jumble.
Do you think they pay well?

[Jay]

Hi Nuri,

A friendly advise...I know you travel a lot to China so please tone down any comments that may infuriate the government. We don't want to see you locked up on an espionage case.

If you do get locked up and they give u a computer to blog, u will be restricted post messages like: "even the cell life here is better than living in a democratic country"

[May]

Hi, Nury

To certain extent, I agreed with Jay's comment above but you really bring us a lot of joy everyday. Keep on writing your interesting & truthful articles.

[Vince A]

Yesterday, Nury commented that he could usually distinguish whether a commenter is male or female simply by the words that person uses.

And today we learned how to detect if the writer is a paid infiltrator.

It must be real fun being able to identify a writer's background merely through the words they use, like:

"The new Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun is just fabulous." - female

"I just love our glorious President Obama" - North Korean defector to the US.

"What should I do next?" - Singaporean.

"This gadget gives you more free time for karaoke" - Filipino

" Ohaiyogozaimasu is the Japanese word for 'Hi'" - non-Japanese

[My dusty diploma in Japanese says it's equivalent to 'good morning' rather than a general 'Hi']

[Vaibhav]

i agree with the above.
Megan Fox is totally HOT.

[farah]

'"The new Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun is just fabulous." - female', a classic male talk.

[Chamin]

Vince,

Theoritically, "Ohayo Gozaimasu" is god morning. By usage, it can be "Hi" at times.

At a flex-time workplace, the greeting can be heard even at 1pm. Means "I just came in", in this case.

[May]

Bingo, Vince

[May]

sorry, let me to correct my statement above. i should say, Bingo! Chamin but not Vince.

[fardel]

i started to learn Japanese a few years ago
I thought that we had to say Hohayo Gozaimas San

You are right
I stopped at the first lesson; My knowledge is not a reference

[Rika]

The internet is all about freedom of speach, isn't it? So please be kind and give the infiltrators the right of speach as well. They must have really wondered why after the Iran elections a lot of people turned their Twitter avatars green.

Maybe the words of Shappy Khorsandi can help to explain, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I5KmlXCLIk it's somewhere around 2:20, well the rest is about names, racism and babies and a few other rather intersting points of view.