BEIJING — More than 2,000 Chinese citizens have been paid cash for blowing the whistle on Internet and mobile porn in the country’s continuing crackdown on adult content.
About $1.47 million has reportedly been doled out by four tip-off organizations, including the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, 12321 Internet Obscene and Trash Information Reporting Center, Internet Illegal Conduct and Crime Reporting Center, and the Reporting Center of the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.
The government authorities began asking for the public’s help in stamping out online porn in 2009 and to date has yielded 1.26 million cases.
Each tipster earned between $150 and $1,500 for information about various forms of online porn including online forums, smartphones, and sex sites posing as dating or sex education sites.
Since the 2009 ban, China has shuttered more than 70,000 websites in its anti-porn crusade.
In what it calls a preventive action, it also implemented strict rules on domain name registrations and user-generated content.
According to TechWireAsia, the authorities have also banned a number of popular non-porn websites and Internet services, including YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, along with Chinese content-sharing sites.
In 2010 5,000 people were arrested for distribtuin online porn, and in 2011 more than 6,000 websites were closed as the government stepped up its attack on what it calls a "contaminated cyberspace."