Net company seeks ‘chief porn identifier’

Experts said Thursday that an Internet company's drive to recruit a "porn identifier" is more to generate publicity than an efficient way to build a healthy online environment.

The Internet company, Anquan.org, is recruiting for a position it has called the "chief porn identifier," which attracts an annual salary of over 200,000 yuan ($32,280).

After the job was posted on the company's Sina microblog Wednesday, the ad was reposted 45,595 times and received 6,844 comments, most of which joked that it was the dream job for a man. 

According to the description, the porn identifier needs to set the identification standards and write teaching materials for doing the job. The identifier also needs to administrate the pornographic resources including pictures and video and assess if it is pornographic or not.

The company describes itself as an organization which unites companies working in security to share resources, according to its website. It has built a partnership with around 800 organizations including Baidu. The company intends to fight unhealthy information on the Internet and build a harmonious online environment.

Fang Binxing, designer of the Great Firewall of China, said Thursday: "I never heard about the open recruitment of such a position. It is only a publicity stunt."

However, Fang also said it could be good for a company to hire someone to watch out for pornographic content.

"Companies will be punished if they have pornography on the website. If there are people inspecting this information and deleting it first, they'll avoid legal trouble," said Fang.

According to China's 2004 "Self-discipline guidelines for Internet websites to prohibit pornography and unhealthy information," Internet information providers cannot post or broadcast pornography.

Wei Wuhui, an Internet and new media expert with Shanghai Jiaotong University, said the person will have little effect because there is too much information online.

"It's a publicity stunt. But it's still good to have companies recruit a porn identifier because China does not have any grading system," said Wei.

Lin Tao, media officer for Sohu.com Inc, said they have a team working to detect pornographic content.

"But machines play the most important role by filtering out pornography first," said Lin.

Anquan.org said it would provide a public statement; this had not arrived by press time.