China is Starting a Government-Run Website Clone to Stamp Out Rumors on the Internet

If you ask the Beijing Internet Association, China’s websites and microblogs are plagued by “made-up stories, rumors, slandering, cursing, and swearing.”

Now the non-profit group, which includes some of the most powerful executives in China, has teamed up with the Chinese government and six of the country’s biggest internet companies to launch a website devoted to debunking internet misinformation. Even the world’s mostly tightly-censored internet apparently needs a state-sponsored truth squad.

So far the site features an incongruous mixture of consumer-friendly information (no, using a cell phone during a thunderstorm does not increase your chance of being electrocuted) and specific denials of wrongdoing, like buying property through ill-gotten gains, by government officials.

Read more at Quartz.