China Plans To Scan Text Messages For Unhealthy Content... Five Years After Announcing The Same Thing

from the it's-winter-reruns-everyone... dept

Apparently, it's time for reruns. The NY Times is reporting that China is now planning to start scanning text messages for "unhealthy content," which is defined as including any of various (secret) keywords supplied by the police. Now, given the recent ramp up in attention paid to China's censorship efforts, this might be interesting... if it hadn't been announced five years ago. This is what the NY Times wants us to pay for? I guess if they block off their content behind a paywall, no one would be able to search the archives of the NY Times to find out that that great paper had covered the story five years ago itself (though, a couple months after we wrote about it).
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: china, paywalls, reporting, scanning, text messages


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. icon
    Marcus Carab (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 11:01am

    Of course, if they participated in the online community and provided links to their sources, we might be able to figure out why this story came to their attention twice and if there is in fact any new information here...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    healthomatic, 20 Jan 2010 @ 11:05am

    introducing the text message wash and dry

    yes folks for a paltry sum of 9.99 you too can get it wiped and cleaned making sure it passes the overlords sniff and healthy test.

    Make sure it never offends, never is unhealthy and never worry again

    [small print here u never understand but is really more ways to rip you off and censor you ]

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Marcus Carab (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 11:38am

    Re: introducing the text message wash and dry

    I get that this is satire, I'm just not sure what of...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Dark Helmet (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 12:59pm

    Re: Re: introducing the text message wash and dry

    "I get that this is satire, I'm just not sure what of..."

    I'm going to go with Coherent Commenting....

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    jimbo, 20 Jan 2010 @ 1:26pm

    what a bunch of control freaks...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Marcus Carab (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 3:33pm

    Re: Re: Re: introducing the text message wash and dry

    DH, that might have been your best ever

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    lighten up fool, 21 Jan 2010 @ 1:21am

    poor darkhelmet

    its a play on bettlejeuce
    where he says welcome kmart shoppers

    i guess if you have no sence a haha you never understand it

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Joel, 2 Aug 2010 @ 12:06pm

    Text Message Screening

    It's crazy how used I have gotten to having my smartphone and having the ability to send thousand of text messages every day. I even get text message notifications from my community church organization.

    Having Text message service is something that I take for granted--just another thing I have to be thankful for.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.