Internet Water Army On the March 137
New submitter kermidge sends in an article at the Physics arXiv blog about what's called the "Internet Water Army," large groups of people in China who are paid to "flood" internet sites with comments and reviews about various products. Researchers at the University of Victoria went undercover to figure out exactly how these informational (or disinformational) floods operate, and what they learned (PDF) could lead to better spam-detection software. Quoting:
"They discovered that paid posters tend to post more new comments than replies to other comments. They also post more often with 50 per cent of them posting every 2.5 minutes on average. They also move on from a discussion more quickly than legitimate users, discarding their IDs and never using them again. What's more, the content they post is measurably different. These workers are paid by the volume and so often take shortcuts, cutting and pasting the same content many times. This would normally invalidate their posts but only if it is spotted by the quality control team. So Cheng and co built some software to look for repetitions and similarities in messages as well as the other behaviors they'd identified. They then tested it on the dataset they'd downloaded from Sina and Sohu and found it to be remarkably good, with an accuracy of 88 per cent in spotting paid posters."
Raise your hand if... (Score:5, Funny)
Your first thought was cyber-payback for "EU says water isn't wet."
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Nope.
My immediate thought was "Buy our tasty Internet Water!*"
*(warning, may contain troll faeces)
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That explains all the pro-iphone/ipad stuff.
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Handy when your talking war with Syria or Accidents in Iran..
Re:Raise your hand if... (Score:5, Funny)
No, my first thought was internet over water pipes, since they have already tried internet over power lines, and other 'utilities (phone companies, cabletv companies) bundle internet with their services (if you get your internet, phone and cable from us you only pay $25/mo for each...
TDMA works with water pipes (Score:1)
TDMA is "Time Division Multiple Access". In other words, we use time slots to control pipe usage.
This will definitely work as long as the time slots are big enough. The city sends water for an hour, drains the pipe so that it can serve as a waveguide, transmits ultra wideband internet for an hour, then fills the pipe back up so that water can be transmitted again. Throughput will be excellent.
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TDMA is "Time Division Multiple Access". In other words, we use time slots to control pipe usage.
This will definitely work as long as the time slots are big enough. The city sends water for an hour, drains the pipe so that it can serve as a waveguide, transmits ultra wideband internet for an hour, then fills the pipe back up so that water can be transmitted again. Throughput will be excellent.
No need to drain a water pipe to move RF through it. Water pipes really could be used, although I wonder about signal degradation especially around bends.
Re:TDMA works with water pipes (Score:5, Informative)
Another way to observe the effect is to put a cup of water in a microwave oven.
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I knew about submarines and their massive retractable antennas and I've used a microwave but never mentally connected them before.
But does it have to be EM? How about sound?
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Right, and there's prior art using soundwaves as memory: mercury delay-lines.
Just don't close the loop and, instead, you have a point-to-point sound transmission system.
In the Real World, that nasty place that makes all our math hard, you'd have to deal with reflections and "impedance mismatches" (where pipes of two different sizes meet). How it would work if you went with an Aloha-net style multiple transceivers on a shared medium I'm not sure, but... I could see a decent RFC coming out of this for the da
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But, but, I have well water. What's the frequency?
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I dunno. My name isn't Kenneth.
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Immune to feline packet loss (Score:2)
That's still a lot faster than a pigeon [ietf.org]!
Not in Europe (Score:1)
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No, my first thought was internet over water pipes ...
Been there, done that. [google.com]
I'm part of the 50% (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm part of the 50% (Score:5, Funny)
Great, now the internet is being Aquaturfed, not just astroturfed....
Feedback loop... (Score:5, Funny)
And, the moment this detection software is for sale, it will be inserted into the paid posters submission workflow.
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but to counter this method you need to be more unique i.e. put more time into each post, it is an economic weapon increasing the cost of abuse significantly and therefore reducing post quantity and number of sites economically target-able.
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or evolutionary pressure could cause the spam masters to write semi-intelligent software to bot post useful on topic information
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I would use the excuse of the of not knowing about that xkcd but there is an xkcd for everything and as soon as I saw the xkcd link I knew.
Re:Feedback loop... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultimately this is why the 'social web' is becoming so important. If I know the people who are telling me something is good then I know they aren't paid for posters. Obviously one side affect of this is that companies are realising that 'influencers' (users who drive adoption amongst their social group) are more valuable and trying to buy their love.
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Except the "ability" to build webs of trust across social networks is a step backwards compared to when sites were small and actually had moderators who cared to keep the quality up. Mainly it is because this "ability" has not been developed beyond an infant level. There has been an incredible dearth in progress on interactive federated trust systems, both for encryption purposes, and for anti-troll/spam purposes. Can you tell a piece of software "I trust this guy to post good stuff, but I trust this oth
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Even so, some organizations seem to consider it worthwhile even at elevated prices. In the forums of www.Spiegel.de (a German news magazine), I sometimes notice first-time posters who defend $CORPORATE_POINT_OF_VIEW with rather eloquent wording. To me that looks a lot like professional advertisers being paid to influence the discussion.
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Nah, what that is, is the PR Department (or hired PR firm) of the firms in question (the ones mentioned in the articles) assign the equivalent of interns to trawl such websites for articles about their company, and to "upvote" or post "positive" messages in support of the company (and do the opposite against negative messages).
It has little to do with the Marketing Department (usually). We normally refer to those people as "astroturfers" or "shills" when being polite. I normally refer to them as "lying assm
Re:Feedback loop... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think one important point when dealing with website trolls and spammers is not to delete their messages, but display it only for them if you can log their IPs / username.
The effect on legitimate users if they get banned in this way is very bad, and I consider this practice to be immoral. It should definitely not be automated.
Just to check, can anyone see this message?
SPAM race (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just another SPAM arms race, the fact that nobody is challenging the reviewers yet is why it's so easy.
Re:SPAM race (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I love /. !!
A thorough review process makes sure that only the best and top quality posts make it to the front side, where intelligent and well educated people can add their remarks. A volunteer group of unbiased moderators that show the almost dream-like ability to not mistake witty irony for trollish flamebait then judges the comments purely on their merits. Wonderful!
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</sarcasm>
You forgot to close your tag. You would think the AI folks could at least teach the bots how to html.
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First mod in the door goes for "insightful" rather than "funny". Meta-humor or anosognosia? You be the judge!
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A thorough review process makes sure that only the best and top quality posts make it to the front side, where intelligent and well educated people can add their remarks. A volunteer group of unbiased moderators that show the almost dream-like ability to not mistake witty irony for trollish flamebait then judges the comments purely on their merits. Wonderful!
My sarcasm detector just clocked itself and started on fire. Damn you... I just got it replaced too...
Glad I'm safe! (Score:5, Funny)
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Umm Yeah .. and good luck. I will be more careful. Even Bablefish is pretty good, now a days. Just saying ......
English -> chinese -> english again, in google translate
Re:Glad I'm a safe! (Score:3)
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Wu mao dang (50 cent gang) (Score:5, Informative)
This "army" has been a staple of the CCP for years. They're usually pretty easy to spot on Chinese language sites and (increasingly) on English language sites. The name comes from the reputed 5 mao (or 1/2 of a Chinese yuan) they're paid for each message. That's about 7 US cents. For the Chinese psyche, it's much more satisfying to see a large number of shill posts that "agree" with the party line than to "waste" effort on even a thin veneer of truth.
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This "army" has been a staple of the CCP for years. They're usually pretty easy to spot on Chinese language sites and (increasingly) on English language sites. The name comes from the reputed 5 mao (or 1/2 of a Chinese yuan) they're paid for each message. That's about 7 US cents. For the Chinese psyche, it's much more satisfying to see a large number of shill posts that "agree" with the party line than to "waste" effort on even a thin veneer of truth.
Isnt' it a tad racist to classify an entire large group of people as having a certain, characteristic, ascribed "psyche" or tendency on the basis of nothing more than having the same genetic race in common?
I don't think you hate them or anything but I don't think you've really thought about why you believe this.
Re:Wu mao dang (50 cent gang) (Score:4, Insightful)
Some things are racist, this sounds more like cultural bias, if you will. I would say similar thing about social norms, but given the context, the same words can be deemed racist, or enlightening.
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I see it pretty clearly: the psychological trends are clearly sloped. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0AhCPkU9sM_R4dFpyaXJXamxKUURyUFZJTnozc252Y1E&oid=2&zx=upmkrqcflv4 [google.com]
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FTFY
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I laughed at your comment.
then I came back an hour later and wanted more.
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They dont even have "the same genetic race in common". China is an enormous country that spans a large number of diverse ethnic groups. In many ways, southern Chinese ethnicities are as "genetically chinese" as people from Korea or Vietnam. You might say its a "melting pot", like the US has been called, except that the diversity is indigenous rather than immigrant.
All that said, there ARE certain generalizations you can make about Chinese which even the Chinese make about themselves-- such as identifying
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The 50-Cent Army doesn't actually post ads so much as disinformation. If a news site publishes a story that is somehow critical of China, the comments section will be filled with "50-centers" defending China mostly by way of deflecting criticism back onto the west somehow. It's quite common on Canadian news sites such as the Globe and Mail, to the point where the editors starting mass-banning obvious 50-center accounts. It's widely accepted that the 50-cent army is paid by the Chinese government.
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What do you expect from a country that uses toddlers as speedbumps?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/23/chinese-toddler-death_n_1027153.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Slashdot Good (Score:5, Funny)
I like Slashdot. Very good website.Soulskill best editor ever.
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To be fair it's better than a goat sea hurricane army. But still dishonorably dirty at sugarcoating enough praise to give web sites diabetes.
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Good God I'm easy....
Re:Slashdot Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever used it. Dont brag, I am an iPhone lover, but WP7 is good. Used all three platform now . No doubt WP7 is better. I am not a fanboy of anyone though. Try reading the reviews you will understand why eveyone is behind WP7. I think Microsoft has learned a lesson and turned around.
- A verbatim reply to one of my recent posts somewhere else. Hmm... 7 cents for that? They overpaid.
That is "amazing" .... NOT! (Score:1)
88% to spot paid posters? Stick around the internet long enough and you can recognize them with better abilities then that software.
This post was a paid poster. Peddling a product that is less effective then other means available to people with a half decent but also half lousy reasoning as to why we need it.
Jim
Re:That is "amazing" .... NOT! (Score:5, Informative)
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That sounds like most slashvertisments.
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Well, this article was a paper about how to detect them
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To be more precise, legacy PR based on controlling the message. "PR 2.0" don't have these fundamental problems
This article very Super Good Thing ! (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey! I see what you did. You're sneaking a very favorable /. review of Slashdot into your comment.Clever.
The mods should be more careful. I suspect you might be one of the spammers. You have 2.5 minutes to respond.
Ob (Score:2)
Michael Kristopeit is cowering.
China = sluicegated.
Unfortunately this is the status quo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunately this is the status quo (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because someone never had issues with something that you dislike doesn't mean that they're a shill. This is something that bothers me a lot about modern discourse on the internet. You can't say anything without being accused of being a shill, troll, or fanboy. On the other hand, people credulously read outrageously biased review sites that give every single product they review 4/5 or 5/5. The absolute worst are tech and gaming sites. I forget which site it was (I think it was AnandTech), but a few years ago, one of the writers did a bit of investigative journalism and put out feelers to see how open hardware review sites were to the idea of paying for positive reviews. A small number of them (they refused to divulge who, unfortunately) openly agreed to it.
The internet is full of trolls, fanboys, and shills, to be sure, but they're not hiding under every rock. Sometimes, it's just a normal person who's trying to express a legitimate opinion. Simply saying that you didn't have any problems with a product is not enough for any accusations, or else you risk labeling every single satisfied customer a shill (and, believe it or not, there a whole lot of easily satisfied people out there, and they simply won't be annoyed by the things that drive you fucking crazy).
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(and, believe it or not, there a whole lot of easily satisfied people out there, and they simply won't be annoyed by the things that drive you fucking crazy).
And this makes their opinion of a product no more useful than the 'opinion' of a spammer. Strain them out with the same filter, please!
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And this makes their opinion of a product no more useful than the 'opinion' of a spammer. Strain them out with the same filter, please!
Yet some people cast that net wider than they should...
Many times I go for the negative comments and the positive ones. Then the middle ones. It has saved me more than a few times from a crummy purchase.
I for example like MS products. Yet I would be considered a 'shill' by many. They are actually one of the few companies out there that will fix their crap (and they have mountains of it). Yet because I tend to like their products (I think in many cases they are better than open source ones and there are many open source things that are better than MS stuff) many filter me out.
Posting as AC certainly doesn't help to not get filtered out!
BF3 vs MF3 (Score:2)
I think I noticed it a bit. Just a tad.
Ni hao (Score:4, Funny)
They also move on from a discussion more quickly than legitimate users, discarding their IDs and never using them again.
I bet not a one of them has as many IDs as Michael Kristopeit.
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Since he couldn't make it here today, I'll fill in for him.
Cower some more, feeb. Ur mum's face has as many IDs as Michael Kristopeit.
Water Pump? (Score:3)
OK, yeah, but what about the Kardashians? (Score:2)
Never done the Twitter thing, I found the following posted on some humor blog, nice response to someone paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the 7 cent thing.
- @KhloeKardashian: "OMG! Wheat Thins has a new limited time sweet cinnamon flavor. Why am I so excited about this?”
- @Kris_Humphries (Not Kris Humphries): "Because you’re an idiot."
Non-english too? (Score:1)
I have been commenting on a some Danish sites regarding tech companies moving go China. One thing I have noticed about China is that everytime someone points out the worker conditions(enviroment / pay etc) or mentions something about human rights, the comments are rated down if options exists and it is followed with answers like "have I efter lived there?", "don't believe the newspapers" etc. But when I become specific, like comments on internet censorship etc, the defense stops or becomes vague nonsense.
There are spammers in China (Score:2)
Where is the news here?
Try CorpSpeak (Score:1)
Workaround (Score:1)
Simple fix. DAM for water army (Score:1)
Yikes! (Score:2)
The Chinese are using 700 club tactics! Were screwed.
Easy to tell (Score:1)
How are these really different than... (Score:2)
who are paid to "flood" internet sites with comments and reviews about various products.
all other media outlets around the world? Oh... one word difference. Replace 'comments' with 'articles'.
amazon comments (Score:2)
That would explain some of the comments I've seen on Amazon recently for knock-offs made in China. The pattern is usually; several people make negative comments about the quality or usability of an item, or point out a flaw that makes the item practically useless. You then get several posts within a short span of time praising the product, and (usually) saying that the others didn't follow instructions or didn't know how to use the product. The praising comments are usually in questionable syntax and ten
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The new term was popularized because the common folk don't understand the difference between climate and weather. Doesn't mean "global warming" is really a less accurate term, since it refers to climate and global averages (as it always did). Thanks for trolling out, folks.
Re:Spammers are like the Climate "Skeptic" Communi (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "Our little corner of academia." It's every major academy of science in the entire world. And they aren't focused on "messaging" because they are scientists, not PR flacks.
It's true that in recent years the coordinated propaganda of the fossil fuel industry has managed to sway masses of uneducated people against the scientific community. But that's not because the fault of the scientific community. Some people out there are just going to believe whoever has the loudest microphone or the endorsement of their local pastor, no matter what the science says.
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that the public is a mass of morons
Well, that at least is a well-known fact. And if you never had the pleasure of working in a customer service job, and never got the chance to discover this fact for yourself..
Then have a look at http://clientsfromhell.net/ [clientsfromhell.net] and http://notalwaysright.com/ [notalwaysright.com]
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Science isn't about "winning" or "losing" in the court of public opinion. Science isn't an American Idol finale where consumers vote for their preferred scientific theory and thus decide the fate of the natural world. Do you honestly not understand that? Do you literally believe that we should seek scientific truth by polling the opinions of our least educated citizens?
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Science isn't about winning or losing. So when the folks at OPERA had some interesting findings about superluminal neutrinos they said "Hey, guys, this is interesting - our timers show stuff moving at greater than c. Help us investigate: here's our methods and data.
But climatologists are all about preventing inspection of their methods and data to prevent political exploitation of it. So that's how it is.
The former are scientists. The latter are politicians. Accept your role and get to winning. If y
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Look, you need to think about what you are saying because you are oozing ignorance.
Anybody can see the data and methods of the climate community. Climate studies are published in detail in the most rigorous and prestigious scientific journals around, including Nature and Science. So if you think that OPERA's neutrino investigation is science nonpareil, then you should love climate science because Nature holds both to the highest standards.
Meanwhile, the denial community never produces any peer review