We have been hearing a lot about Russian payments for ads in social media, but we have not been hearing about payments for people who write comments on social media platforms and news agencies. The Russians are leaning on Chinese expertise for some of the same types of Internet controls that China uses. They are growing increasingly like the Chinese who know how to do Political Warfare. The Chinese go directly to the heart of their campaigns to sway public opinion by paying for comments. The cited article says, “They estimate the Chinese government ‘fabricates and posts about 448 million social media comments a year.’ They say the operation is massive and secretive, the goal being to ‘distract the public and change the subject.’” If the Russians paid for ads, you can bet they also paid for writers for mass media and social media outlets.
No comments:
Post a Comment