Ride the Lightning

Two Million Chinese Workers Monitor the Internet

October 8, 2013

TWO MILLION? Now that's an impressive army of folks keeping tabs on all the other folks. The BBC published an article on October 4th quoting The Beijing News, which describes the monitors as Internet opinion analysts. A clever job title for people, whose job involves, probably in large part, collecting negative statements about the government. They are on both state and commercial payrolls.

China's hundreds of millions of Web users increasingly use microblogs to criticize the state or vent anger, which is not especially startling in such an oppressive environment. Monitors target social media in particular – again unsurprising.

Monitors type in keywords specified by clients each day. I am assuming that the clients are primarily various government agencies as well as corporations with strong ties to the government. The monitors compile reports, especially of negative opinions, and send them to the clients. They monitor websites outside of China as well.

The mere existence of the article was interesting since China has tended to be mum about the scale and sophistication of its Internet police force through which it, effectively, attempts to control the Internet within China.

While I'm not sure we're all that different from China anymore in terms of online surveillance, I am pretty sure we don't have TWO MILLION monitors watching us.

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