MESSAGE
| DATE | 2021-12-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Chinese Learn Atrosurfing from Bill Gates - trust
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/china-facebook-twitter-influence-manipulation.html
How China Uses Contractors to Spread Propaganda on Facebook and Twitter
Muyi Xiao, Paul Mozur, Gray Beltran
14-17 minutes
INSIDE A CHINESE PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
境外社交平台注册
Register accounts on foreign social media platforms
按月报单价
Charge monthly
5000.00
元/月
RMB/
Month
境外社交平台账号伪装及维护
Disguise and maintain overseas social media accounts
按月报单价
Charge monthly
5000.00
元/月
RMB/
Month
制作原创视频
Create original videos
按月报单价
Charge monthly
40000.00
元/月
RMB/
Month
A list of services and costs itemized in Chinese renminbi from a private
contractor that won a bid to work for a branch of the Shanghai police
department. • Note: English translation by The New York Times from
original Chinese document text.
Flood global social media with fake accounts used to advance an
authoritarian agenda. Make them look real and grow their numbers of
followers. Seek out online critics of the state — and find out who they
are and where they live.
China’s government has unleashed a global online campaign to burnish its
image and undercut accusations of human rights abuses. Much of the
effort takes place in the shadows, behind the guise of bot networks that
generate automatic posts and hard-to-trace online personas.
Now, a new set of documents reviewed by The New York Times reveals in
stark detail how Chinese officials tap private businesses to generate
content on demand, draw followers, track critics and provide other
services for information campaigns. That operation increasingly plays
out on international platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which the
Chinese government blocks at home.
The documents, which were part of a request for bids from contractors,
offer a rare glimpse into how China’s vast bureaucracy works to spread
propaganda and to sculpt opinion on global social media. They were taken
offline after The Times contacted the Chinese government about them.
上海市公安局浦东分局舆论技术服务项目竞争性磋商
Shanghai Pudong Public Security Bureau Public Opinion Technology
Services Project Competitive Negotiation
A notice posted online in May calling for bids from contractors.
On May 21, a branch of the Shanghai police posted a notice online
seeking bids from private contractors for what is known among Chinese
officialdom as public opinion management. Officials have relied on tech
contractors to help them keep up with domestic social media and actively
shape public opinion via censorship and the dissemination of fake posts
at home. Only recently have officials and the opinion management
industry turned their attention beyond China.
供应商能随时提供境外社交平台相关的账号提供给采购方。平台包括推特、脸书等，每月每个平台提供约300个账号。注：此项目内容时效性较强，需随时提供相关平台账号;
Suppliers should provide accounts on overseas social platforms to
purchasers at any time. The platforms include Twitter, Facebook, etc.,
and the supplier should provide about 300 accounts per month on each
platform. Note: Content for this project is highly time sensitive.
Suppliers should be able to supply accounts at any time.
Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
The Shanghai police are looking to create hundreds of fake accounts on
Twitter, Facebook and other major social media platforms. The police
department emphasizes that the task is time sensitive, suggesting that
it wants to be ready to unleash the accounts quickly to steer discussion.
Bot-like networks of accounts such as those that the Shanghai police
want to buy have driven an online surge in pro-China traffic over the
past two years. Sometimes the social media posts from those networks
bolster official government accounts with likes or reposts. Other times
they attack social media users who are critical of government policies.
Recently, Facebook took down 500 accounts after they were used to spread
comments from a Swiss biologist by the name of Wilson Edwards, who had
purportedly written that the United States was interfering with the
World Health Organization’s efforts to track the origins of the
coronavirus pandemic. The Swiss embassy in Beijing said Wilson Edwards
did not exist, but the fake scientist’s accusations had already been
quoted by Chinese state media.
境外社交平台账号伪装及维护。供应商将部分境外社交平台包装成精品账号，即该账号存活时间需要长久，有一定数量的粉丝，并可用于推广一些素材，
每月每个平台需要保持3个账号，并保证每月粉丝有一定的增长。注：此项目时效性中等，主要每周会统计账号发帖数及存活率，故一旦账号被冻结，需及时补救；
Disguise and maintain overseas social media accounts. Suppliers should
package a portion of the overseas accounts into a group of premium
accounts, that is, accounts that survive for a long period of time, have
a certain number of fans, and can be used to promote information. Each
month on each platform three accounts must be maintained, and an
increase in fans must be guaranteed each month. Note: this project has
intermediate time sensitivity. Each week, the number of posts and
survival rate of accounts will be calculated. If an account is
suspended, it needs to be fixed in a timely fashion.
Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
The Shanghai police’s social media effort is not just a numbers game,
and this portion of the document underscores efforts to shift from
brute-force tactics like using bot armies to something more subversive.
The police department is seeking an upgrade in sophistication and power:
a series of accounts with organic followers that can be turned to
government aims whenever necessary.
The request suggested that police officials understood the need for
strong engagement with the public through these profiles-for-hire. The
deeper engagement lends the fake personas credibility at a time when
social media companies are increasingly taking down accounts that seem
inauthentic or coordinated.
Bot networks that have been linked to China’s government stand out for
their lack of engagement with other accounts, disinformation experts
say. Though they can be used to troll others and boost the number of
likes on official government posts, most of those automated accounts
have little influence individually since they have few followers.
境外社交平台账号落地。供应商通过搜寻境外平台发布相关内容的账号（具体内容不定，按实际内容为准），并利用技术手段查找其境内真实信息，并获取该人境内信息。
Touch the ground for overseas social media accounts. Suppliers search
for accounts on overseas platforms that publish certain content (the
specific content may vary, subject to actual content). Use technological
means to find an account’s real information in China and obtain the
user’s information in China.
Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that
refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account:
“touching the ground.”
With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down
and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its
agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a
new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners
who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to
delete their accounts.
Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of
China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover
the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their
users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten
family members in China or detain the account holders when they return
to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even
entire accounts.
供应商通过在境外论坛上发布指定素材，并提高该帖的浏览量并保证帖子能处于论坛前端。每月需提供至少10次服务内容。
The supplier should publish designated content on overseas forums. They
should increase the number of views of the post and ensure that the post
appears at the top of the forum. The service should be provided at least
10 times per month.
Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
In previous Chinese information campaigns, bot-like accounts have been
used to add an unrealistic number of likes and retweets to government
and state media posts. The contrived flurry of traffic can make the
posts more likely to be shown by recommendation algorithms on many
social media sites and search engines.
In recent weeks, a similar pattern emerged from a network of bot-like
accounts amplifying evidence that was issued by state-media journalists,
purporting to show that tennis player Peng Shuai was safe, freely eating
dinner in Beijing and attending a youth tennis tournament.
The Shanghai police explain very clearly the functionality that the
department desires, demonstrating a familiarity with recommendation
algorithms on social media. Its approach underscores something that
propaganda officials know well: A cluster of junk accounts can briefly
make one post from an official account appear to go viral, giving it
greater exposure and lending it credibility.
供应商制作指定素材的视频，每段时间长度越2-3分钟。
The supplier should produce videos about specified content. The length
of each video is about 2-3 minutes.
Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
As overseas Chinese propaganda campaigns have developed, they have come
to rely more on visual media. Officials are looking for a company to not
only maintain and deploy fake accounts, but to also generate original
content. The demand for videos is high.
A separate document reviewed by The Times shows that the same local
branch of Shanghai police purchased video-making services from a
different company in November. The police asked the supplier to provide
at least 20 videos a month and to distribute those on domestic and
overseas social media. The document referred to the task as original
video production that would be used to fight the “battle of public opinion.”
Earlier this year, a New York Times and ProPublica analysis showed how
thousands of videos portraying members of the Uyghur ethnic minority
living happy and free lives were a key part of an information campaign
that Twitter ultimately attributed to the Chinese Communist Party. When
Twitter took down the network behind those posts, it took down accounts
linked to a contractor that it said helped shoot propaganda videos. A
Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.
Three weeks after the Shanghai police department’s request became
public, a company called Shanghai Cloud Link won the bid, the documents
show. In its pitch, the company listed itself as having just 20
employees. According to the LinkedIn page of its founder, Wei Guolin,
the company works with multinational firms and provides services in
“digital government” and “smart cities.”
Mr. Wei did not respond to a request for comment. The Shanghai Pudong
Public Security Bureau did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
Work like what Shanghai Cloud Link pitched is likely just the tip of the
iceberg. Local governments and police across China have put out similar
requests for services to influence overseas social media, but often in
vague terms. Occasionally, specifics are revealed. In 2017, for
instance, the police in Inner Mongolia purchased software that allowed
government trolls to post directly to multiple social media sites,
inside and outside of China, according to documents reviewed by The Times.
In another case, a contractor had downloaded hundreds of access
credentials for Facebook’s public feed, allowing it to collect data
about who commented on which posts and when. Facebook did not
immediately comment.
Shanghai Cloud Link’s winning bid offers a window into how much some of
these types of disinformation services can cost.
序号
项目
报价要求
单价
单位
1
境外社交平台注册
按月报单价
5000.00
元/月
2
境外社交平台账号伪装及维护
按月报单价
5000.00
元/月
3
境外社交平台账号落地
按次收费
9800.00
元/次
4
境外信息素材搜集
按月报单价
5000.00
元/月
5
境外论坛账号注册、发帖等
按月报单价
5000.00
元/月
6
制作原创视频
按月报单价
40000.00
元/月
综合单价（上述单价求和）
69800.00
元
Number
Task
Pricing Require-ment
Price Per Unit
Unit
1
Register accounts on foreign social media platforms
Charge monthly
5000.00
RMB/
Month
2
Disguise and maintain overseas social media accounts
Charge monthly
5000.00
RMB/
Month
3
Touch the ground for overseas social media accounts
Charge on a case-by-case basis
9800.00
RMB/
Case
4
Collection of overseas information
Charge monthly
5000.00
RMB/
Month
5
Register accounts and post content on overseas forums etc.
Charge monthly
5000.00
RMB/
Month
6
Create original videos
Charge monthly
40000.00
RMB/
Month
Total unit price (sum of aforementioned unit prices)
69800.00
RMB
A pricing table from Shanghai Cloud Link’s winning bid, which lists
costs in terms of Chinese renminbi. As of Sunday, 6.4 renminbi equaled $1.
In many cases, tech contractors seek to sell Chinese authorities the
hardware and software outright. In this case, Shanghai Cloud Link’s
proposal hinted at a new service-based model, one in which officials pay
on a month-by-month basis — a sort of subscription for social media
manipulation.
--
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that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
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