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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/22/479057698/study-chinas-government-fabricates-about-488-million-social-media-posts-every-ye [npr.org]

For years, the Chinese government has been widely [bbc.co.uk] suspected [freedomhouse.org] of hiring thousands of paid commenters using fabricated accounts to argue in favor of the government on social media sites. This presumed army of trolls is dubbed the "50 Cent Party," because of the rumored rate of pay per post – 50 cents in Chinese Yuan, or about $0.08.

But new research finds [harvard.edu] that those presumptions are inaccurate. Actually, the Chinese government's use of fabricated posts is "way more sophisticated than anybody realized," Harvard professor Gary King tells The Two-Way. King and two other researchers, Jennifer Pan and Margaret E. Roberts, analyzed a set of leaked emails from an Internet Propaganda Office in Zhanggong, which is in southern China.

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