REVEALED: China has an army of paid trolls, guess who else has one?

Hillary Clinton is paying $1 million for professional trolling services.

The next time you encounter an internet troll, be warned, he could be getting paid to fan the flames, or to douse your conversation. A new study our of Harvard reveals that China is using an army of 448 million fake troll accounts to influence public opinion. And China isn't the only country doing this. It's happening in the United States as well.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Paid at the rate of 50 cents a post, China's "50 Cent Party" is tasked with manipulating public opinion on the individual level. Agents work as many as 448 million social media accounts, responding to criticism, shouting down critical commenters, and boosting the government's public image online. This is according to a new study just released by Harvard researchers.

The study evaluated emails that were leaked from a Chinese Internet Propaganda office and that 43,000 people are working full time, sometimes responsible for over a hundred accounts each on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

According to Chinese activist Ai Wei Wei, one of the paid trolls confessed the following:

"Usually after an event has happened, or even before the news has come out, we'll receive an email telling us what the event is, then instructions on which direction to guide the netizens' thoughts, to blur their focus, or to fan their enthusiasm for certain ideas. After we've found the relevant articles or news on a website, according to the overall direction given by our superiors we start to write articles, post or reply to comments. This requires a lot of skill."

The objective is to distract or to change public opinion of a subject so that it favors the government's image.

However, this does not happen in China alone. In Russia, there are services that you can purchase that will work troll accounts to change public perception on political issues.

And this is happening in the United States as well. Hillary Clinton has famously said she will spend $1 million on similar services in the United States, in a bid to control the public narrative about her candidacy. Supporters of Bernie Sanders have complained that these trolls invented the "Bernie Bros" narrative, of white, misogynistic males who are opposed to Clinton's nomination because of her gender. Some "Bernie Bros" have been outed as fakes on Reddit.

Facebook has been accused of using its algorithms to feed people only news and information that is consistent with their worldview, which turns the social network into an echo chamber.

With the death of objective reporting and investigative journalism, the public no longer has reliable sources of information to educate their decision making process. This makes people vulnerable to propaganda and control.

Don't feed the trolls.

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