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by pow_pp_-1_v 2953 days ago
Interesting. The whole thing is so simple. A government wants to get their message out quickly and efficiently before negative stories get too much attention. So, how to do it cost effectively? Simple, ask normal government employees to write pro-government posts on social media when they get time. Plus their career prospects improve if they do it. Finally a reminder on certain days about their duty to spread the good news about the government.

I guess the only weakness in the whole scheme is people reporting back to an authority about their work. I am pretty sure they got rid of that after the leak. The genius of this thing is that if you ask the people who write these posts if they are doing propaganda, there's a good chance that their initial genuine response will be to say no.

2 comments

> if you ask the people who write these posts if they are doing propaganda, there's a good chance that their initial genuine response will be to say no.

Actually, they'll probably say yes. Most Chinese do not think of propaganda as something negative. Every student club at my university has an unironically named "propaganda department" that manages their social media. "Propaganda" just never underwent the value shift that happened in other countries, so although there's a translation of "PR" almost nobody uses the word.

I briefly worked at a (US) company who upon hiring you provided you with copy to post on both LinkedIn and Glassdoor. I genuinely liked the people so I didn't object or even mention how tasteless this was. Instead I just bailed.

Same shit IMO.