Chinese police shut down ‘water army’ of internet trolls paid US$4.3 million to blitz websites and social media
- Authorities in Jingzhou say family-run operation was paid by public relations companies to send online army to shut down negative comment about clients
Police in central China detained 30 members of a “water army” – paid internet trolls – who made 30 million yuan (US$4.3 million) by deleting negative posts about clients who included “well known listed companies”, Chinese media reported.
The case, which involves four public relations companies, was the biggest of its kind in the province, the Hubei public security bureau said on Wednesday.
China’s water army has flooded social media with positive posts about the government and attacked Beijing’s critics. Its activities also include manipulating information about private companies or deleting negative reviews of goods and services.
Authorities in the city of Jingzhou began investigating the case in May 2017 and discovered a family-owned operation led by a woman called Wu and her brother, who were arrested in Guangzhou in August this year.
Trolls were paid hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of yuan to delete posts, Hubei’s state-run Chutian Metropolis Daily reported.
Wu fled to Japan to avoid arrest and from there instructed workers to cease operations and destroy their computers, Shanghai-based news portal Thepaper.cn reported. It did not say why Wu returned to China.