In China, there is a group of people called 50 cents party. The named "50 cents" is based on their income rate. Basically, they are low educated people(no high school diploma) who are working on the Internet. Their job is mainly about spreading the comments on major forums and social networking websites. A lot of Internet users think those activities are common, like commenting a YouTube video, or a product review. However, the 50 cents party takes it as a career. They write thousands and thousands comments daily under the command of their employers. Their goal is to shift viewers opinions.
First fact, they get paid 50 cents for each comment. Each day, their boss will assign them a task, for example, saying something negative about a company's product. And soon, one leader of this party will write a post complaining this product in one of the major forums in China. The rest of the party members will start to agree with this post and add more negative thoughts about it. Sooner or later, the viewers will trust what they say, and really think this product is worthless to buy. This is 50 cents party's power, they pretend to be normal Internet users, and secretly change people's opinions in very short amount of time.
Since the Internet users has grown into a half billion, there is a huge market for 50 cents party. In common, people trust other's feedback more than the advertisements. So companies start to hiring 50 cents party people to spread their products on the Internet. This causes the unfair competition because they also hiring them to attack their enemies. The true value of the product has been covered by those comments. Because the power of this media really affect people's thoughts, the online shopping consumers have a hard time to choose products.
As this goes by, all the credits of the companies become less and less trustable. People are unable to tell which are the truths and which are lies. The Internet comment has become a flood of fake.
No comments:
Post a Comment