Chinese Internet Trolls

[lpetrich]

Not just Russia, but also China, is hiring armies of Internet trolls.
Nnevvy: Chinese troll campaign on Twitter exposes a potentially dangerous disconnect with the wider world - CNN - what I found striking about that is how very naive those trolls are about other nations and their politics.

After Thai actor Vachirawit Chivaaree liked a photo on Twitter that listed Hong Kong as a "country," Chinese fans inundated his Instagram and other social media with comments "correcting" him, and he soon posted an apology for his "lack of caution talking about Hong Kong," which is a semi-autonomous Chinese city, and not an independent nation.

For years, Chinese internet nationalists have leapfrogged the Great Firewall to go after the country's critics on banned social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. They've attacked pages run by the Taiwanese government, pro-Uyghur groups, and businesses deemed to have offended China, inundating them with abusive posts and clogging up their timelines.

In seeking to insult the Thais they were arguing with, they turned to the worst topics they could imagine, but instead of outrage, posts criticizing the Thai government or dredging up historical controversies, were met with glee by the mostly young, politically liberal Thais on Twitter.

"Say it louder!" read one post, after trolls shared photos of the Thammasat University massacre, in which government troops opened fire on leftist student protesters in 1976. Other Thais posted memes laughing at the futility of Chinese trolls attempting to insult them by attacking a government they themselves spend most of their time criticizing.

Jason Y. Ng on Twitter: "I found this #nnevvy meme to explain why Thai netizens are winning the PR war on Twitter. I think it all comes down to one simple fact: while Thai people love Thailand, they don’t equate country with gov’t, which frees them from blind loyalty and the “glass heart” syndrome. https://t.co/j8Eg04fTbM" / Twitter

The attitude expressed by the angry "little pinks" engaging in it, an easily offended, touchy nationalism that links love for country with love of the Communist Party and its leaders, has grown substantially in recent years, drowning out -- with the assistance of the censors -- what limited criticism there was of the government on the Chinese internet.

Online protests over food safety, pollution, and corruption have forced changes in official policies, even as authorities have kept protests from going offline, in physical gatherings. But they have not always been successful.

In 2012, large-scale violent anti-Japanese riots broke out in several Chinese cities over a dispute between Beijing and Japan over ownership of the Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyu Islands, in the East China Sea. Four years later, after a ruling in Manila's favor at the Hague over territorial claims in the South China Sea, protesters targeted Filipino and US businesses, and demanded the government take military action.

The authorities succeeded in suppressing these protests, however. There have also been some online protests of what seems like the authorities selling out about Hong King - making concessions and pro-democracy parties winning.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm confident that there are plenty of internet trolls out there from many other countries as well.

 

[repoman]

These are operatives, not even trolls who are fed enough of an ideology (by a campaign or a government) to think they are independent.

Hasbara is just about the best at this.