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This is a series of articles published by Kai Fu Lee. I did the translation after graduation from university in summer to learn more about the technology trend and practise my translation skill.

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Social Media Mercenaries for Hire!

李开复LinkedIn文章翻译之二十 - 社交媒体水军供出租咯！

In China, the term “Internet Water Mercenary” refers to paid-to-post Internet users. These paid spammers or commenters often work for public relation firms or competitive companies. They actively visit popular social media websites, forums and micro-blogs to influence public opinion. These paid posters often post favorable comments about their employers product/services and negative comments on their competitors. Most live under many fake names, and some even use automated tools to accelerate the dissemination of misinformation.

在中国，“网络水军”这个词指的是那些付费评论的网民。这些收费寄垃圾邮件的人或发评论的人通常为公关公司和竞争的公司工作。他们活跃地访问各大流行的社交媒体网站，论坛和微博来影响公众的观点。这些付费的发布人经常发布一些对他们的雇主的产品或服务有利的评论。他们中的多数都是使用的假名字，有些人甚至用自动化的工具来加速谣言的传播。

How to fight back against “Internet Water Mercenary”? There are several ways:

1. One way is to identify mercenaries, by checking on posting frequency, shared IP address, repetitive content, and fake-looking accounts. It is possible to automatically or manually delete these at least in your own “territory”.
2. One effective way to tackle the problem is to require those who write online posts to register under their real names. The Chinese government is requiring micro-blogs to do this.
3. Another way which I don’t like is: if one can pay spread rumor; one must have a way to pay to remove rumor. There are some service companies that claim to help clients delete negative comments online.
4. Finally, the best way is to become more powerful yourself. If you have a popular social media account, then you can dispel rumors, and your followers can help spread the word much faster than the mercenaries. A serious weakness of the mercenaries is that they rarely have any real followers, so in the age of social media, they cannot bring down a truly powerful individual or company.

​如何抵挡这些“互联网水军”呢？有这么几种方法：

1. 一种方法是识别这些水军，通过检查发布频率，共享IP地址，重复的内容和假冒的账号。在你自己的“领地”自动或手动地删除这些东西是可行的。
2. 一种解决问题的有效方法是，要求那些发布线上内容的人实名注册。中国ZF正要求微博这么做。
3. 另一种我不喜欢的方法是：如果一个人能付钱传播谣言；另一个人必须有一种方式来付钱删除谣言。有一些服务公司声称能帮助客户删除线上的负面言论。
4. 最后，最好的方法是让自己变得更强大起来。如果你有个很受欢迎的社交媒体账号，然后你就可以驱散谣言，你的粉丝们能帮你比水军更快地传递言论。水军有个严重的弱点就是，他们几乎没有什么真正的粉丝，所以在社交媒体的时代，他们打不倒真正有实力的人物和公司。