Anyone seeking the truth last week on China's favourite social network, Sina Weibo, was in for a disappointment.
Up on his or her computer screen would have flashed the message 'According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results for 'the truth' cannot be displayed'.
Apparently the very notion of the truth is now deemed so subversive that the word itself has been censored.
It's easy to laugh at such ridiculous paranoia, but censorship is no joke. Whether self-inflicted or imposed from without, it is an unmitigated evil which carries grievous commercial and civil costs.
Nevertheless, censorship will always have its apologists. As a journalist, one of the first stories I ever wrote concerned dodgy dealings at the commodity futures broker Refco. Almost 20 years later, I can't now remember the details of the scandal. Very likely it involved either front-running - when brokers take positions on their own account before working large client orders - or rat-trading - when dealers retrospectively allocate successful trades to favoured clients and distribute their losing trades among other accounts. Both were common at the time. Either way, it was clear customers had been left out of pocket.
Not long after, I was hauled over the coals by an executive from a rival futures broker. Stories about malpractice served no good purpose, he said, they only deterred clients. That was bad for business and damaged the industry as a whole, including trade journals like mine, which relied on brokers' advertising dollars to pay their reporters' salaries.