Trojan Horses in Your Feed: China's Sneaky Trolls Posing as Everyday Bliss| Digging into China

Hi, I'm Dong Shong. Welcome to Digging into China, where we explore China in depths to review unique perspectives. Not long ago, the Xplatform caught everyone off guard with a new feature. It suddenly revealed everyone's IP addresses. In an instant, a bunch of CCP's big overseas propaganda operations got exposed. We all know this obvious fact. Regular folks in China can't directly access platforms like X, YouTube, Google or Facebook. Any normal Chinese person wanting to use this has rely on a VPN to get around the wall. People using VPNs to hop on X might show IPs from Hong Kong, Singapore, or the US. And often there is a little shield icon after it signaling they are on a VPN. But on X, some accounts are next level. They connect straight from China's network and their IP just flat out says China. This perk even beats what the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Ma Ning gets. She has to use a VPN to flip the wall. Yet these folks can link up directly to X. So who exactly are these people who can connect straight to X? Well, it's pretty clear they are only one answer. They are the ones officially allowed to flip the war. Of course, these sanctioned war flippers could be CCP hired the trolls or maybe some of those inmates folks talk about who are hustling for sentence reductions. But right about now, someone might pipe us pipe up and say, "Nah, it can't be that these are selfapplied special lines." And that's the main excuse a lot of CCP trolls are clinging to these days. They claim it's illegal to flip the war in China. Sure, in theory, you can apply for a special line to legally access foreign nets, but does anyone remember that official direct foreign net service high rolled out not long ago? 1,500 yen for 5 megabytes, 3,000 for 10, and only business can apply with a fivemon approval wait. No normal person would bother with that. Let alone a company shouting out for this fire host thing bandwidth just to let employee log on and do so-called patriotic promo on X. What company has time for that? Unless the company itself is in the propaganda game. So the conclusion that these China IP folks are big overseas propaganda ops is rock solid. That doesn't mean everyone using Hong Kong or Singapore VPNs is automatically propaganda. No, it just means they are not the mass-roduced CCP troll squad. Now that we've covered the China IPs, let's look at how many of these big Chinese propaganda accounts are out there on X right now. Let's just say it's way beyond what anyone imagined. Here, I'm not even counting the VPN trolls, just the straight China IP ones. And the numbers blow past what most people think. A friend online whipped up a simple script to scrape X for China IP accounts and overnight it pulled over 9,000. The real ties got be higher. And heads up, these are all active trolls. Accounts that only like retweet or go dormant past a certain time don't show up. Looking back historically, the CCP's internet army has deep roots and it's always run on three clear tracks. The prison track, the college track, and the government track. The earliest public report on CCP internet trolls dates to 2004. That's basically troll year one for the CCP. That year, the Ministry of Education and the Communist Youth League teamed up to issue this thing called opinion on strengthening the and improving campus cultural construction in higher education. In it, the CCP first mentioned openly recruiting internet trolls, though in their lingo they pretty it up as internet commentators. After that, you see colleges jumping in to answer the central call. For instance, a 2006 report in a Wooi Daily show the Jang Nan University in Wooi recruiting 70 politically solid top student internet guides. Maybe internet guide and internet commentator still sounded too rough. So they gave these 50 centers a nicer tag. Internet red guests. Soon this red gas further spread nationwide. The places like a Tenzin University and the Sutran University all got it on it. Of course, these so-called college red guests got the peanuts for pay or maybe nothing at all. Pure volunteer work. In a way, they don't even seem like a 50 centers, more like a self motivated ones. But these are government directed self-otivated types. And that's the origin of the college tracks. On top of that, the earliest news of a government department openly recruiting trolls goes back to 2005. According to the well-known Jang Su paper, Yangzi Evening News, the city of Su Chen in Jang Su province recruited the 26 net evaluators that year. That's the oldest public government troll recruitment you can find online. Now, though in theory, official CCP trolls probably kicked off even earlier. In 2006, the Hi city propaganda department to put out a file called inspection report on propaganda and the cultural work in Nanchong Chong Sha and Jung. The point was for HU officials to study the city's top troll training methods, but it accidentally spilled a detail, the trolls pay. The file said starting in 2004, Chong Sha said he had been recruiting internet commentators aka trolls with a monthly salary of 600 yen. But as this file got passed around online, somehow it morphed into trolls getting 600 yen a month plus 50 cents per post. And that's where the term 50 centers really came from. But there is where I get stick up for these CCP internet trolls a bit. calling them 50 centers is actually shortch changing them. That article never said anything about the 50 cents per post. That's pure rumor. And heck, do they even deserve 50 cents? Truth is, a post from them is worth just 10 cents. For the real post rewards, check out this report. In 2010, the Hungyang City Committee Party School in Hunan published an article called Management Measures for Net Evaluators. It laid out a clear rules for troll ethics and standards. Though the funniest part was it listed their post bonuses. So how much per post? One meager 10 cents plus a flat a 100 a month. That's a salary no style saying 50 centers rake in 50 cents a post way too generous. Beyond that the prison track everyone's heard about is different from the college and government ones. There's a tons online about the prison posting like incentive setups, but nothing with hard public data. Finding open dogs on prison troll recruitment is tough. Inmates don't get recruited. You don't post, you get the baton treatment. And given prisons set up, scaling up troll training notices or files are hard to track. But prisons definitely have trolls. The earliest trace goes to 2010. In that year, the third woman's prison in Yinnan province went off script and posted a training pig for internet commentators right on their official site. Later, the prison denied it, claiming it was training for guards to be commentators, not inmates. But netizens weren't buying it, and as soon like the Yinan's third woman's prison ones started popping up everywhere. Prison Net evaluators pretty much nailed it down. Of course, back then with internet attack not so hot and the CCP not sweating it much, the troll scene was an amateur hour. Small scale ad hoc, nothing organized. But once Xi Jinping took the wheel, troll development exploded into overdrive, hitting warp speed. She might not match Hu Jin on the economy, but on building an internet army, he lapsed him. In 2014 with the shei heading up the central cyerspace affairs leading group he stressed at the launch that the CCP needed to use the net to spread the core values and spark positive energy. Trolls status in China shot up they become a national priority. The CCP sacred cow from there the internet army rocketed ahead shifting to big scale and prolevel ops. First off, personnel went massive in the who one days scrapping together a few dozen local net evaluators with small potatoes. But under shei numbers skyrocketed in 2014, the net info office email for Jangong district in Gandro City, Jangi province got hacked. The breach leaked their troll roster around the 20 active in 2013. But by 2014, the answer of central call for cyber war, it jumped to 292. That's 15fold spike. Think about it. If one district's government trolls hit nearly 300, then across China's government trolls alone could be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. These trolls blanket every corner of the net. Take X. Even porting 10,000 direct China IP trolls is not small fry. But during the 2019 Hong Kong protest, X dropped a report saying at least 200,000 Chinese trolls accounts were on the platform. Imagine beyond axe how many on Facebook, Instagram. Don't get me started on domestic media. Overseas trolls need a feeding and anti-bam protection. Domestic apps, zero hassle. picture how trollinfested those world insights might be. Or next time you see a comment section full of little pink nationalists inside the wall, are those real people or just trolls? A lot of what we see as comments might not be from humans at all. China's internet is like a real life Truman show in sports of course and the she besides scaling up trolls ops got pro first pro move bring in capital early 2014 the CCP stopped to the old threetrack play prison college government all in but by around 2017 a new element hit business commerce turned into the troll powerhouse for example an early New York Times probe showed Shanghai police starting in 2017 with the planned long-term open bids to companies for handling their troll works. These firms monthly set up overseas accounts for local cops and pumped out post. Plus, the Australian government exposed this outfit called Changing Culture. Since 2015, it's been cranking out the Shing Jang glossing promo videos for Shinjang police, posting on X and YouTube. quote that year 600,000 y but despite dropping 600 grand the channel scrapped under 1,000 views before getting banned a,000 views in a year to pocket a CCP cash like that CCP money is a steal for the CCP it wasn't just commercial evolution they started using straight up marketing tricks like buying followers and the likes per Australian government stats from 2019 CCP linked account saw Like accounts explode on X and Facebook. Clear sign they are buying boosts too. And for the CCP beyond the tapping capital markets better their propaganda playbook shifted too. We figure these trolls buzzing online huffing and puffing their their takes what they up to debating dissident and hashing and bashing the US right that was the early game especially who won error. But she's time smarter play. In 2017, Harvard put out an analysis of CCP troll content. They estimate just on foreign nets. The CCP fakes about 500 million trolls posts a year broken down five main types, mocking foreigners, scrapping with other users, posting CCP policies, showing satisfaction with the Chinese life, and appraising China, loving the party and the country. By old school thinking, trolls main gig should hit types one, two, and five. Slamming western nations, fighting dissident, gushing CCP love. But Harvard's numbers over 60% are actually everyday beautiful Chinese live stuff hitting types three, four, five instead of trolls diving straight into dissident braws or western rants. You see this in the latest X troll bust too. Sure, in that wave of cult trolls, some are heavy on the fight picking, mostly ripping the US and hyping the CCP. They don't just praise the CCP and trash America daily. They tag team specific dissident big influencers with the sprays. Some even spin up their own YouTube channels. But in those 10,000 China IPs scrapped, most aren't picking fights or cursing folks out. They are just straight up polishing China's image. Big hot spot gorgeous Shinj Jang. Tons of these IPs rock handsome Shing Jang guy and gal profile pics. And their daily drops are cookie cutter idelic Shing Jang life. Of course, those idyllic Shing Jang life and daily life actual Shing Jang folks. And it's not just Shinjang. Every region's got them. The CCP strategy crystal clear for them. Why have trolls blast hard polit political lines on foreign nets and turn everyone's off? Better to push positive energy posts. One, it sneaks in China's good side. Two, it dilutes focus on China's touchy political stuff. Distracts the crowd. These accounts silent the Trojan horses long-term beauty post life snippets. They pull views. Take this account for aping actress G Yan. Every post gets dozens of replies, hundreds of likes, tens of thousands of views in quiet times. No big news. They farm the channel with daily life fluff. Build traffic play harmless. But when it's a go time, the white paper revolution or Hong Kong protest, these accounts flip, tweak the handle, swamp with proy blast to counter punch long game beauty baits for clutch moment firepower. That's their troll playbook. Bottom line, the CCP's internet army isn't some urban myth. It's a longhaul reality scale way past what we picture tactics, too. And this is just the nailed down stuff. From what I know, the CCP quietly buys off anti-CCCP bloggers, even some Taiwanese ones, for spy and promo gigs like this. This massive troll swarm brings a scary truth. Sure, we say hop the wall and you've are free from CCP brainwashing, but the CCP's wash is everywhere. Their net stretches out for sides loaded with it, too. Just lighter than inside, but it's there. Escaping CCP brainwashing. It's a long tough grind, folks. Stay sharp. Thank you so much for watching. If you find this video helpful, please like it, drop a comment below, and hit the subscribe button. right here. It really helps YouTube suggest my video to others. I'll be back with more content soon.