In online novels, characters use social networks to spread false and damaging news to attack competitors, often using a variety of strategies and means. Here are some common methods: 1. **Creating fake accounts ("water army")**: - **Fake identities**: Characters may create a large number of anonymous or fake social media accounts to create a false impression. These accounts appear to be independent, but are controlled by the same person or team. - **Mass release of information**: Through these accounts, a large number of similar or related negative information is released at the same time, quickly forming a hot spot on the Internet and enhancing the credibility of the message. 2. **Spreading rumors and fake news**: - **Fictitious events**: Fabricating false events about competitors, such as business fraud, personal scandals, or moral corruption, to attract public attention. - **Exaggerating facts**: Distorting or exaggerating real events to make them seem more serious than they actually are, thereby damaging the reputation of the other party. 3. **Manipulating public opinion topics**: - **Topic guidance**: Using hot events or sensitive topics to shift the focus of discussion to competitors, and using the traffic of hot topics to increase the exposure of false information. - **Creating controversy**: intentionally provoking discussions and disputes, stimulating emotional reactions from netizens, and causing negative information to spread rapidly. 4. **Using visual forgery technology**: - **Deep forgery**: Using deep learning technology to generate forged images, videos or audio to create the illusion that competitors are involved in improper behavior, such as forged meeting recordings, fake transaction screens, etc. - **Editing content**: Editing and modifying real content to create misleading evidence and mislead public opinion. 5. **Infiltrating and destroying the opponent's social circle**: - **Infiltrating**: Obtaining the internal information of competitors through network intrusion or social engineering, and selectively leaking sensitive or harmful information. - **Sowing discord**: Spreading rumors about internal conflicts or team discord of competitors to weaken their team cohesion and external trust. 6. **Using social media algorithms**: - **Brushing operations**: Through a large number of likes, reposts and comments, manipulate the recommendation algorithms of social media to give false information a higher exposure rate. - **Trend manipulation**: Adjust keywords and tags to make false information appear in the recommended content of more users, increasing the speed and breadth of information dissemination. 7. **False reviews and reports**: - **Fake reviews**: Posting a large number of negative reviews under a competitor's products or services to influence potential customers' decisions. - **False reports**: Submitting false complaints or reports to social platforms or relevant regulatory agencies, resulting in the blocking of competitors' accounts or deletion of content, damaging their online image. 8. **Creating false cooperation and associations**: - **Fake cooperation**: Pretending to have a partnership with a well-known brand or person, publishing false cooperation news, and confusing the public. - **False association**: Linking competitors to negative events or bad organizations, using existing negative images to further drag down their reputation. **Morality and consequences**: Although characters in online novels may achieve their goals through these means, the plots usually also show the negative consequences of such behavior, such as the character's own moral decline, broken relationships, or eventual exposure and retribution. This not only adds to the drama of the story, but also conveys a warning against unfair competition. **Summary**: Through the various means mentioned above, characters in online novels are able to use social networks to efficiently spread false information, quickly influence public opinion, and thus attack competitors. However, the complexity and covertness of these means also provide rich possibilities for plot development, while also reflecting the double-edged nature of information dissemination in the modern social media environment.