User:FangzhuLu/sandbox article two

Internet Water Army

Hello everyone! This is my sandbox for Internet Water Army article. There are some newly added sections as well as some original sections. For those new sections (Reasons, Types, Features, Current Affairs), all information is newly added through research. For original sections, i.e. "detection", I copied the current content on topic page and bold the information I added or any changes I made. Thank you!

Lead (an original section, bold parts are newly added)
On the Internet in China, an Internet Water Army or Wangluo shuijun is a group of Internet ghostwriters paid to post online comments with particular content. '''Internet water armies were born in the early 2010s. These paid posters can post news, comments, gossip, disinformation on some online platforms such as Weibo, WeChat and Taobao, China's eBay-like platform ''' In this "astroturfing" (meaning "artificial grass-roots") technique for public relations and media manipulation, online Chinese companies employ people to make postings on social media in order to change public opinion. '''It has been developed into an industry that a company specializing in doing internet water army can earn 7.6 million RMB within three months. 'The private Wangluo shuijun'' operations parallel the official 50 Cent Party propagandist Internet commentators hired by the government of the People's Republic of China or the Communist Party of China.

Reasons (a newly added section)
Online marketing in China has become a big and profitable business and has spawned many Internet public relations agencies. Internet water armies working for these PR firms not only advertise products but also remove any negative feedback they find.

In recent years, many celebrity agencies in the entertainment industry and their die-hard fans are willing to spend millions of yuan to hire Internet water armies to generate positive online reviews for their songs, movies, etc. These Internet water armies range from a handful of people to hundreds, and help those celebrities inflate their social media accounts' followers with thousands of completely useless followers. Besides, some entertainment companies also use Internet water armies to bump up film ratings and smear a rival's reputation.

For many people who join the "Internet water army", they think online paid posters is a new type of online part-time job opportunity and it's an easy way to make money. With the pervasiveness of personal computers and smart phones as well as the easy-to-use microblogging, the income of Internet water armies is a primary reason why many people choose to join them. More than 60% of Internet water armies earn more than a thousand yuan per month by posting and deleting reviews.

Types (a newly added section)
There is no limitation to joining the Internet water army. Low-end migrants, housewives and students are the main force.

There are basically three types of Internet water army. The first type is the one which voluntarily spreads the posts promoting social justice. The second type is the one mainly hired by the government or state-owned companies to promote propaganda or ensure social stability. The third type is the one working for private companies, such as public relations companies, to pursue their own interest.

Features (a newly added section)
Paid postings involve thousands of individuals and posters use different online IDs. Every day, around 40 percent of the trending hashtags on the social media platform are created by Internet water armies. The content is usually well-prepared and there is a quality control team to check whether the postings meet the customer's standard. Some companies hire Internet water army to leave good comments under their selling products' feedback, and some singers or film stars also pay them to be fake followers on Weibo, the Chinese twitter. The price for posting good comments and bad comments is different and it depends on the content. If there are negative reviews about a product or some gossip targeting a person, he needs to pay the Internet water army for screening and deleting those negative reviews.

There is some difference between internet water army and 50 cent party. The concept of 50 cent party is narrower since it only refers to paid posters who deflect political discussions and post any positive and supporting reviews related with the central government. According to a Harvard study in 2017, it is estimated that there are 448 million social media comments fabricated by the "50 cent party" hired by Chinese government. These comments avoid touching upon controversial and sensitive issues.

Current Affairs (a newly added section)
After Cybersecurity Law came into effect in June, 2017, Chinese government paid more attention to crack down on fake news and rumors online. China is battling with the Internet water army.

In 2017, Chinese Internet regulator imposed strict bans on hiring paid posters as a part of a sweeping campaign to tighten the Internet control. Police arrested more than 200 people in 40 water army cases and closed 5,000 paid poster accounts since May, 2017. In June, a man was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison and fined 920,000 yuan ($135,000)  for generating fake transactions and product reviews on Taobao. This is the first judicial case that a suspect was charged with this offense in China.

In July 2018, the producer of Asura, a Chinese epic fantasy film based on Buddhist mythology, said that their movie's rating was brought down by fake comments on an influential rating platform. Therefore, many Chinese young people generally ask their friends' comments about a movie as they know the feedback online is not reliable.

In August 2018, Guangzhou’s latest move targeting the Internet water army was about a larger scale crackdown launched by China’s public security authority, invloving 77 suspects and 4 million yuan ($635,000).

Detection (an original section, bold parts are newly added)
Internet water armies is a big threat for cyber security. IT researchers have experimented with statistics and software to detect paid commenters from real-world ones.

'''Some scholars adopt dirichlet process mixture model (DPMM) based GSP algorithm to detect Internet water armies from Tianya forum. They use DPMM to get effective analysis of the Internet water army's user behavior and use the sequential pattern mining algorithms to detect those paid posters' accounts.'''