China’s top news aggregator to hire Party members to weed out porn

News-aggregation platform Toutiao announced Wednesday it would employ 2,000 people to examine its contents and Communist Party members would be given preference for admission after regulators temporarily suspended parts of its channels for “spreading pornographic and lewd information.”

Toutiao released a notice on an online recruiting website lagou.com on Wednesday that it plans to employ editors in Tianjin to check whether contents on the site have violated regulations and to make sure all contents are handled in a timely and accurate manner.

All editors need to check about 1,000 messages per day, including pictures, stories and videos.

The monthly salary of an editor is expected to be 4,000 yuan ($615) to 6000 yuan.

“Party members would be preferred,” read the recruiting information of Toutiao.

Toutiao has suspended more than 1,000 unregulated accounts and included “New Era” as one of its in-app default channels to release information or reports about China’s accomplishments and efforts after socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, according to a notice posted on its WeChat public platform on Sunday.

Toutiao is also recruiting editors in Beijing to examine videos in the Japanese language: to check on contents related to violence, pornography and terrorism. The monthly salary ranges from 6,000 to 12,000 yuan.

The platform has a team of more than 4,000 content reviewers and editors, the largest in China, and its content review staff is expected to exceed 10,000, news site thepaper.cn reported Wednesday.

The recruitment drive came right after Toutiao was ordered to temporarily suspend parts of its channels for “spreading pornographic and lewd information” and providing news services without the necessary licenses.