BEIJING — China is picking up the pace targeting smartphone applications in its drive to erase porn from the cyberspace.
Baidu, China's largest search engine, this week removed 903 problematic apps — most of them offering porn — from its app store.
Last year, more than 2,200 websites and more than 20 million of micro blogs and online forums with “improper” content were shut down.
Most of the material with the sites and micro blogs were pornographic, China’s government said. Even messages were purged — about 1 billion of them.
China said the crackdowns will continue this year, and more Internet companies are asked to voluntarily agree to self-police content.
In late November, more than 50 service providers, including Baidu, signed an agreement to improve their self-policing of apps, under a requirement of the capital's cyberspace administration.
The companies vowed to eliminate illegal ones if they find and verify them, according to the agreement.