This seems to be a fairly reoccurring theme - countries requesting internet sites to mass censor user content. Rarely though do they understand the scale of what that means. In the article, it stated that they wanted each item to be screened by a human. In the same way that I'll quote a client a much larger price if they want IE6 support, I often don't see why these companies don't just quote the country a price for…
The request itself may be clueless, however you can easily mass censor content that contains certain keywords. It can get pretty effective too, as is the case with spam filtering. You could even detect the tone of the article - if it's a positive or a negative one. Plus you can hellban the users too and they won't notice the censorship until much later. So I don't get what a discussion of costs will bring, as there's…
Then you get ridiculous situations for mass banned keywords like recently in Pakistan or for a long time in China, most recently 'jasmine tea' was banned. China arguably has the most 'sophisticated' censorship system in the world, with over a million staff policing internet content & developing systems to monitor content, but it is still noticeable to users. So your theory that it can be implemented without notice is largely false.
Its also quite easy to get around most keywords by using slang or alternatives for political leaders, such as 'The Old Man' (usually negative) for Robert Mugabe, 'Mr Bow Tie' (sarcastic, negative) for HK CE Donald Tsang or 'The Lady' (positive) for Aung San Suu Kyi. Using single initials is also popular.
I've lived in several dictatorships & the ingenuity of anti-censorship can be quite simple to overcome complex systems.