China bans thousands of websites in a cleanup campaign

China has banned and shut down some 4000 websites including online accounts in a three-month campaign to clean up the internet. The government has shut down the websites that are considered to have “harmful” online information according to Xinhua news which cited country’s illegal publication watchdog.

China has a strict control over the internet for long, the country has been targeting the illegal online activities from time to time including gambling, pornography, religious content and even fake news and rumours.

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According to China’s National Office, the authorities started the campaign in May and tackled 120 violations and ordered 230 companies to remove the irregularities. More than 147,000 documents containing harmful information was removed from the internet by the end of August.

According to Xinhua News the cleanup campaign targeted the content spreading improper values, obscenity, vulgarity and the content infringing copyright.

The authorities also claimed last week that they have blocked an online live-streaming pornography platform which was hosted in Cambodia, the platform has more than 3.5 million registered users.