Mike Elgam of Datanation wrote recently about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its decision to 'assert supremacy over online public opinion'.

Mike notes:

'The CCP has hired thousands of freelance Internet propagandists whose job is to infiltrate chat rooms, message boards and comment areas on the Internet posing as ordinary users to voice support for the agenda and interest of the CCP...  Some estimates claim that the 50 Cent Army includes a whopping 300,000 people. If that's accurate, China's freelance propagandists exceed in number the total populations of 47 countries.'

He goes on to explain how:

'With 300,000 people, you can see how the CCP could easily determine what makes it onto the front page of Digg, and what gets shouted down. They could use Wikipedia, YouTube and Slashdot as their most powerful tools of global propaganda. It would be trivial for China to determine Yahoo's "Most Popular" news items ("Most E-Mailed," "Most Viewed" and "Most Recommended").'

And Mike notes how: 'The more China's 50 Cent Army succeeds, the more support will fall behind the idea of fixing the problem by illegalising anonymity.'

This ties in with the issues we covered last week - anonymity and the problems of protecting children on the net. 

Until now the Web - for us in the West at least - has been a place where you can relatively easily “be who you want to be”. It's not uncommon, for example, to author a blog under a different name or have an avatar on Twitter.  This is all fine until threats such as Mike highlights and which we pointed to last week occur - then you do have to consider where the boundaries should lie. 

The UK government has already given new powers to the police, allowing them to hack into your PC. You do perhaps have to ask yourself if these levels of intrusion are justified at this stage. Does this example make you feel more secure - or insecure - because of the watchers? 

Are we experiencing the beginning of the end of the Wild West of Web2.0, and seeing it replaced by a more constraining "chánzú"   Eastern style Web3.0? 

Image via Flickr, by DailyInvention under CC