Another wrinkle on the wumaodang phenomenon. Instead of the Chinese state hiring people to post favourable comments about government policy, you have shuijun, the “water army” paid by private companies to delete unfavourable comments about themselves and their products and services.
Related shakedowns include commercial websites spamming negative comments about companies in order to pressurize them into advertising on their site, and companies suing websites carrying genuine complaints on the grounds that they are faked, but basically to get them to censor themselves.
That last scam’s outsourced to people like Schillings here, but it really is the Randian internet back behind the Great Firewall. More commentary over at China/divide.
A strangely Japanese approach really - presumably they don't have shareholders' meetings so there's no local equivalent of , but this is all in the same book.
Posted by: dsquared | June 25, 2010 at 12:10 AM
Related shakedowns include commercial websites spamming negative comments about companies in order to pressurize them into advertising on their site
This incidentally, happens in the UK every so often, but on a pettier scale. There was a recent libel case involving the 'Solicitors from Hell' website, which managed to sabotage its own defence by admitting that it charged criticised lawyers between £99 and £299 to have negative comments removed...
Posted by: Richard J | June 25, 2010 at 01:18 PM