Volunteers include government staff, students and white-collar workers. (Photo : Reuters)
The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center has made significant development in the past year in reducing illegal and improper content online, an official of the center said.
The center received 20,000 reports of violence- and terrorism-related online content from netizens. It also ordered websites and network managers to delete 200,000 pieces of illegal content, according to Zhang Chenggang, director of the center.
According to Zhang, the center was established in 2005, operating under the supervision of China's Cyberspace Administration, as a move to invest more resources in ridding the Internet of illegal content posted on various platforms such as websites, micro blogs, and text messaging sites.
Prior to 2005 up until today, however, China has been implementing a nationwide campaign against online violence and terrorism.
The center required administration branches and Web operators to ensure channels can detect such content and to provide more avenue for netizens to report banned content, Zhang said.
China has 4.23 million websites producing a total of 40 billion pieces of content on a daily basis. Zhang said this is a "huge workload for the Internet management departments to cover, let alone distinguish illegal or harmful ones from among them.
"Lots of terrorism-related content is hidden in cloud storage or by instant messaging tools, such as WeChat and QQ, and small forums online, " Zhang added.
The government is against content that promotes violence and terrorism through videos and audio recordings, and terror messages and photos on covert sites that spread separatist messages or advocate for religious extremism.
Increased netizen reporting helped the center efficiently monitor the Internet as well, according to the director. For example, a netizen reported a WeChat account that posted a large number of photos, including a woman beaten to death.
"The clue provider sent such screenshots to us. We verified the report and asked the WeChat operator to handle the case in a timely manner, such as removing the photos or even shutting down accounts," he said.
Last year, the center allocated more than 2 million yuan ($308,000) for netizens who identified terrorism-related content, and this encouraged more netizens to tip the center, Zhang said.
The top three netizen complaints in 2015 revolved around pornography, fraud and rumors. These resulted into the center dealing with 1 million reports in the last year. In addition to handling citizen tips directly, the center also ordered local websites to manage more than 38 million reports to make the process more efficient.
The center removed 15,000 pieces of content that harmed children and coordinated with other Web administrators to delete more than 9,500 problematic website links and QQ and WeChat accounts.
Nearly 3,000 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, have since then volunteered to tip the center about illegal content.
"Some volunteers are from government departments, while some are college students and white-collar workers," Zhang said. "We established some WeChat groups to communicate, and trained 500 of them."
