4 Classic Signs You’re Dealing with the “Internet Brigade”

In many authoritarian regimes such as China and ours, the rulers tend to establish internet brigades that uses underhand methods to achieve political agendas. Below is a list of what they usually do.

1. Help to promote “positive energy”

In official politician pages and make “negative energy” in anti-regime pages through comments and likes. This is as seen in many ghost accounts with very positive comments in many of the Chinese officials’ profiles.

2. Help to give opposition a bad image.

Many of the internet brigadiers impose as pro-opposition but tend to comment with extreme viewpoints against the regime to the extent of it being ridiculous to give the opposition a radically bad image. They can do this through means like posting ridiculous comments that are pro-opposition with extreme contents to dissuade the moderates into distaste for the opposition thinking that the opposition is too radical. An example can be this website(https://creationsciencestudy.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/airasia-flight-qz8…) which is ostensibly from a “true Christian”but with contents that makes Christianity (and American conservatives) look bad.

3. Help to remove anti-regime contents.

The internet brigadiers work together to report contents that are anti-regime when they realise that the two methods above do not help much. By having many people report a content(be it a photo, a status) on Facebook, the content that an opposition politician or a dissident posts will likely be removed by Facebook automatically. One way they report is that a brigadier reports to Facebook that an opposition politician’s photo is actually the brigadier’s property and other brigadiers follow suit to report that the photo is the intellectual property of someone they know. With Facebook receiving tens of thousands of reports each day, Facebook might remove the photo automatically without actually checking if the reports are baseless.

4. Promote pro-regime activism.

Using the point from number 2, they post pro-regime moderate and intelligent come backs against extreme and radical seemingly pro-opposition contents. With this, many ignorant or sound moderates will tend to have the viewpoint that the opposition is too naive and radical and will take part in pro-regime activism.

It is time that we as sound anti-authoritarian liberals help to curb the Internet Brigade’s cunning doings. This post that I post may even be targeted by the internet brigade if The Real Singapore posts this. Do come and visit this page “The anti-internet brigade” to take part in our activism against the misuse of the internet by dictators. If they use underhand methods, so shall the we. United the opposition stands, divided we will get oppressed.

This story was written by The Anti-Internet Brigade.
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