![]() ![]() She later checked with her boyfriend, who is also in the group, and confirmed that he couldn’t see any photo of the protest. ![]() Tina, a 38-year-old Beijing resident, sent a photo of the protest to a small group chat on Thursday, though she suspects the image didn’t even reach the other members. The real-time censorship system seems to have been applied to images from Sitong Bridge. ![]() This has sometimes driven users to get creative, using puns, distorted images, or hard-to-understand languages to mask what they want to share. One of the results is that once the system identifies an image as subject to restriction, it can immediately block all users from sending that image. In 2019, the Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab found that WeChat imposes real-time automatic censorship of chat images through a mix of text recognition, visual recognition, and tools for detecting duplicate files. Similar waves of mass suspension also happened during other online protests, such as when people were criticizing the inept government response to omicron flare-ups in Shanghai in April. Still, it’s well known that sending politically sensitive content on WeChat, even in private exchanges, can result in account suspension. It doesn’t give any examples of the politically sensitive content it censors. WeChat’s terms and conditions has a lengthy section on what content is banned, but it’s only specific when illustrating examples involving scams, spam, rumors, gambling, or pornography. A 2017 regulation from China’s Cyberspace Administration targets online group chats and prohibits both platforms and users from “spreading content forbidden by laws and relevant regulations.” In 2021, popular social media platforms Douban and Weibo were publicly fined millions of yuan for allowing “illegal” content to be seen on their platforms. ![]() In China, the government holds social media platforms responsible for closely screening user-generated content. Protests like the latest one are already rare in China today, and many people won’t ever learn it happened. The mass suspension also has an effect on society as a whole: the latest example of how swiftly China’s censorship machine works to silence dissent will only further chill these voices in the future. It takes days, if not weeks, to reestablish their digital connections with a new account. It has a significant practical impact on individuals, as they are now blocked from using the many digital services tied to their accounts, from health QR codes to online subscriptions. Tencent didn’t respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.īeing banned from WeChat isn’t exactly a trivial matter. Though there’s no official number on how many accounts were banned that day, there are numerous reports across Weibo and other social media platforms of WeChat users’ losing their accounts since the protest, some not knowing what they did wrong. I thought at the time I would only be banned for a few days,” he says. “We knew it would cause a suspension, but we didn’t expect it to be permanent. The decision was made “according to the relevant Internet policies as well as laws and regulations,” the boilerplate notification from WeChat reads.Īnother member of the group chat also tried to send the photo his account was also banned, Chen later learned. Users soon realized that just posting a picture of the event, even in a private group chat, could cause their accounts to be permanently banned.Ĭhen, a Beijing resident who asked to be identified only by his last name, says he sent a photo of the protest to a group chat at 1:11 p.m Beijing time on Thursday, and his account was permanently banned at 5:35 p.m. This censorship extends to WeChat, the dominant messaging app with over 1.2 billion global users, the majority of whom live in China. ![]()
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