China is paying commenters to say the ‘right’ thing

The Chinese government has a long tradition of keeping an eye to the media in order to prevent critical messages towards the communist party, a task that has become difficult since the rise of the open and worldwide Internet. The government started attempts to control the content on their domestic network, the rise of the ‘great firewall of China’. All network traffic entering or leaving China must pass through government controlled gateways, with dramatic results: bloggers avoid questioning the government to avoid being pulled of the web, and Skype was summoned to filter out certain words in their text messages. Pacific Morning Post pointed me to an interesting article this morning, it seems that approaches are changing, with a new attempt for the Chinese communist government to safeguard their interests on the web. (read more)