The Outsourcing of Winston Smith

In China, media organizations need to be careful that they don't publish (or let users publish) materials and information and references and images and etc. that the Chinese government would rather not have their people know about.

That's a big job, so these organizations in turn outsource censorship screening of their online materials to companies that specialize in such things. This article looks at the companies that do that, and the workers who actually make those judgments about what cannot be published.

And, fascinatingly, the first thing that has to be done with those workers is education about those very forbidden topics (such as Tiananmen Square), which — because of the censorship they are about to become part of — these people have never known of before.

Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It
Thousands of low-wage workers in “censorship factories” trawl the online world for forbidden content, where even a photo of an empty chair could cause big trouble.

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