Friday China Porn Site Closure Round-up

BEIJING, China—If it's Friday, it must be time to list the number of porn site closures by the Chinese government! This week in Fun with Dicktatorial Censorship, we have the announcement by the country's State Internet Information Office that yet another 1,222 porn sites have been shuttered by the government. At least we think it's a different 1,222 from previous closures, but who really knows for sure. The mystery is a part of the fun. What we do know (because we were told) is that the government itself reports of these recent closures, via Global Post, "The websites including some on medical treatment and health, were closed for providing videos or photographs of a pornographic nature, or linked to porn websites abroad." The government also claims that about "2,200 pieces of text containing pornographic information have been deleted in the 'Cleaning the Web 2014' campaign," and though we're not quite sure what that means, the Internet Information Office says the campaign has been effective and that "more efforts will be taken to curb the spread of pornography on the Internet." This recent campaign to scrub the web of porn and porn information text reportedly ends in November.