DE-POSTING BUSINESS: Some website editors can get paid to delete posts that are deemed to be negative and could ruin the image of products and their companies(CFP)

Don't take things for granted, assuming everything happens for a reason, especially in cyber space where there are mounds of conspiracy as well as cherished freedom. Behind the many Internet incidents that have taken place in recent years in China, so-called "Internet marketers" and "paid posters" have begun to emerge.

The "paid posters," netizens who are hired to put up posts and replies to generate certain social impact on the Internet, are dubbed the "watering army," as Chinese netizens like to call the activity of online posting "watering."

The "watering army" is mostly hired by fledging Internet public relations firms, or Internet marketers, who basically renders services to cook up popularity of certain products or potential celebrities, as an alternative to regular online advertising.

In late October 2010, the police solved a slander case in which dairy producer China Mengniu Dairy planted vicious online defamation about baby formulas from its major rivals. The company started rumors that Shengyuan Dairy Co.'s milk powder had caused premature puberty. The conspiracy was plotted by a director of Mengniu's child dairy department and a PR firm, which was hired by Mengniu to draft and conduct the project.

There has been a variety of online publicity or defamation incidents since 2005, when a girl kept posting her saucy photos on a website to attract tens of millions of hits. The girl, who named herself "Sister Lotus," became an instant Internet phenomenon and even achieved international acclaims from various Western media outlets including The Washington Post and Time magazine. Later it was discovered the Sister Lotus episode was plotted by an online marketer.

Posting for money

Reportedly, the online "watering army" is composed of part-time and full-time members. The majority of them are part time, consisting of college students and regular white-collar employees. And the "army" has other "soldiers" who are unemployed and thus have plenty of time to devote to the Internet.

The payment for online "watering" usually prices at 0.3-0.4 yuan ($0.05-0.06) for each posting and 0.1-0.2 yuan ($0.02-0.03) for each reply. The main posting is drafted by the organizers. And there are other types of posting such as the "sinking posting," where someone posts a large amount of posts in a short period of time to squeeze the target posting to the bottom of the page so that it's hard to find.

The "watering army" is typically hired by various small online PR firms, most of which have no more than 10 employees. The firms assign missions that are passed onto the heads of various chat groups on QQ, China's largest instant messenger that claims to have more than 300 million active users. The QQ chat group heads deliver the assignments, and the members of the group carry out the plan.

Besides the hired "troops," there are regular website editors who contribute to such posting. The online PR firms will pay the related Web editors to put up postings that are advertisements but don't look like advertisements. Each posting is priced at several hundred yuan.

Comparatively, such editor's postings can be placed at the targeted and important website sections, so they are more influential.

Posting vs deleting

In a country with more than 420 million Internet users, irregular online marketing has become a big business and spawned a large number of budding Internet PR agencies. Their services include not only marketing a product in a more subtle and unnoticed way, but also removing negative feedback.

Real estate, cars and electronics are the most lucrative fields when it comes to deleting negative posts, according to Ma Mingdong, a 25-year-old Beijing blogger and online marketer. "Many people think it's complicated to delete posts but it isn't," he said.

Ma said it only costs a few hundred yuan to bribe website or online forum editors. If a bribe is not successful, the "watering army" is called in.

In common practice, online posts can be deleted legitimately when a company or individual provides a copy of their ID card or business license.