

Prominent Weibo Users Paid to Bash Apple? Introducing China’s ’820 Party’ - brisance
http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/03/prominent-weibo-users-paid-to-bash-apple-introducing-chinas-820-party/

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yiransheng
Did not expect this to be picked up by HN. I watched the 820 drama on weibo
live, it never surprises me how low-class CCTV can be.

As of the reason why CCTV is suddenly after Apple, I saw this chart[1] on
weibo, which could shed some lights on the situation. It reveals a detailed
breakdown of Apple's TV advertising spending in China. It seems Apple put the
lion share of their budget on provincial TV channels (the blue area on the pie
charts) instead of CCTV - the supposedly most watched TV channel in the
country.

Also, I would like to offer some knowledge of CCTV's mob-like operations.

CCTV has been falling out of favor for both viewers and advertisers. It failed
to innovate and offer shows/programs people care to watch; when it falls
behind in the marketplace, the state sponsored monopoly would wield its
political power and paint competitions politically incorrect labels (Eg.
accusing other channels' shows being 'vulgar', 'reactionary' etc..). This has
happened a few times with popular shows on provincial channels.

Typically, CCTV do not organize similar massive campaigns to defame its
clients; but there's always an exception once a year: the 3-15 annual gala.
Every March 15th, CCTV points fingers to companies 'who severely violates
consumer rights', exposing industry scandals and unethical businesses. The
3-15 show has its popularity, as consumers frequently fall victim to the wide
range of unethical (sometimes outright illegal) behaviors prevailing the
Chinese corporate world. CCTV is the only media outlet who has the political
capital to make such nationwide accusations without fearing consequences.

Therefore, it is not surprising CCTV leverages this show to send a warning
message to its current and potential clients: "we can easily make you or break
you, do your advertising with us or watch your brand destroyed next year." It
has been a known fact that CCTV uses 3-15 as a tool to punish the 'not-so-
well-behaved' advertisers and hold Chinese companies at their hostage to
maximize their advertising revenue.

Clearly, Apple has been categorized as one of those bad boys this year, and
CCTV decided it needed a lesson.

[1][http://photo.weibo.com/1401318455/wbphotos/large/photo_id/35...](http://photo.weibo.com/1401318455/wbphotos/large/photo_id/3556254762965374?refer=weibofeedv5)

~~~
est
the pic you posted requires login, this is the direct link

<http://ww2.sinaimg.cn/large/53866c37jw1e2qvbu5qsnj.jpg>

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georgemcbay
I've been bashing Apple for years for free. Now I feel like I've been robbed!
Where's my Apple bashing money, China?

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totmann
That's the rough reality in China, 'cos basically all the media in China is
manipulated by the gov, and they need to do what they are told, or else they
will receive a big kick-ass "surprise", which is currently no one would be
expecting. So lots of slapsticks like this happen in here from time to time.

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jayfuerstenberg
Paying people to support a cause makes said cause appear weak and will often
backfire on you.

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mortalkastor
The site appears to be down.

I was able to retrieve the content but not the CSS, so I made a mirror with no
stylesheet (but with working comments) here : <http://jsbin.com/apanuw/1>

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comex
Off topic, but those messages are sure a lot longer than 140 characters in
translated form. I suppose that if app.net wants to know whether its longer
character count limit is a good idea, it can just look to China.

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phate
I'm no expert but doesn't chinese have single symbols/words that when
translated turn into multiple words. And it maybe unrelated but don't chinese
characters take up more space in the ASCII table or something. Again I'm no
expert.

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eru
Ascii does not include Chinese characters. It doesn't even include European
alphabets. You might be talking about unicode?

> I'm no expert but doesn't chinese have single symbols/words that when
> translated turn into multiple words.

Often more like one Chinese character per Chinese word. But you also have
compound words of multiple characters, I believe. And then, translation to
English isn't word for word, either.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Usually one or two characters per Chinese word, two characters being much more
common for anything other than simple words. More than two characters is not
unheard of for less commonly used words.

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_pmf_
Who but really hardcore Apple shills believe this shit?

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flyinRyan
Oops, it turned out to be true so where does that leave you?

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_pmf_
> it turned out to be true so where does that leave you?

It's not suddenly true just because the consensus is that general China-
bashing is a fun pass time.

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contingencies
Can anyone weigh in some informed hearsay on the general 0day market for iOS
vs Android, OSX vs. Windows? Is it possible that Mac products are causing
state surveillance headaches?

Another, perhaps more realistic motivation is that it's simply in China's
economic interest to support mainland Chinese device manufacturers ... who can
only produce using Android.

... posted from a non mobile phone user, on OSX, in China.

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objclxt
General consensus is an iOS zero day exploit is worth around $250-750k,
increasing in recent months. Expensive, but not exactly unaffordable for an
intelligence agency.

To me, the commenter who suggests this is happening because Apple isn't
spending their ad budget with CCTV seems rather more plausible.

