The War against China's Blogs

I'd never thought there was such a thing as dishonest blogging. Unfortunately, the news in this article about groups that 'help' multinationals around the web has changed my mind completely.

Companies around the world have started a business in helping multinational companies such as Nike and McDonald's control the web by monitoring blog posts and 'killing off' any negative comments. They also provide positive feedback through bloggers that get paid about $0.015 each post or topic they make, a decent incentive for making up propaganda that helps or criticizes a company. Actually, they don't even have to make it up- the company even writes out the posts, and they just have to copy it somewhere.

Honestly? That's just wrong. I understand that they're trying to make a business out of things, but there are probably many other ways to do something more honest than what they're doing now. I'm pretty sure that there's an evil mastermind that writes up all of the propaganda that's laughing evilly right now, actually.
Sure, some companies are doing this for a good reason. Daqi, for example, helped Metersbonwe Group, a retailer in the Forbidden City, get a lease for a larger store after the group got evicted from its old space for a Nike store. However, I believe that it's only a matter of time until the groups are there purely for the purpose of getting companies to hire them to ridicule their enemies. Groups like these, in my opinion, destroy the very structure of the Internet and violate one of the unspoken rules of honesty in the blogging world. Why should they be given the power to just, as the article put it, 'squelch' negative information? I understand that bloggers seldom change their minds about a subject (Unless, of course, offered a large amount of money), so asking them to change their posts would be very difficult. However, just destroying their opinions is very dishonest, in my opinion.

In conclusion, my opinion is that the companies doing this for 'good' (Good is, of course, by perspective) reasons, such as Daqi does on occasion, should (by ethic morals) keep doing it only for 'good' reasons, like helping domestic retailers. However, the companies that hire people to post negative feedback about another company should be stopped. People are entitled to their own opinions, and they shouldn't be influenced by the amount of money they can be paid to express it.