the scramble for comment boxes

A couple of years back I blogged about the professional trolls employed by certain Chinese government agencies to keep internet discussion harmonious. To wit:

…at the end of last year, a total of 127 Internet commentators completed their training in Beijing. They were drawn from various provincial, municipal and city supervisory units as well as central government supervisory units. The central government disciplinary supervisory department has established a leader group for propaganda against corruption, and that has a special Internet Propaganda Department with members drawn from the Central Propaganda Department and the Central Government External Propaganda Department, and this group is linked with the People's Net, Xinhua Net and other central government news websites on the work related to fighting corruption and promoting honesty.

Great minds, etc:

The State Department, departing from traditional public diplomacy techniques, has what it calls a three-person, "digital outreach team" posting entries in Arabic on "influential" Arabic blogs to challenge misrepresentations of the United States and promote moderate views among Islamic youths in the hopes of steering them from terrorism.

…The department's bloggers "speak the language and idiom of the region, know the culture reference points and are often able to converse informally and frankly, rather than adopt the usually more formal persona of a U.S. government spokesperson," Duncan MacInnes, of State's Bureau of International Information Programs, told the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats on Thursday.

via. If China starts doing outreach with this and the Russians, the EU, the Indians et al join in as well then we’ll have Comment Imperialism.

Comments

[Justin]

It'd be great. We could all back away slowly and go and do something else leaving the various astroturfers talking to each other.