7:24 pm HKT Aug 15, 2014 CULTURE
Reuters
Chinese authorities recently set off another round of hand-wringing over the state of public discourse with an announcement of new regulations on “instant messaging tools” that appear aimed at increasing state control over the dissemination of news on mobile chat applications like Tencent’s enormously popular WeChat TCEHY -0.53%. The new rules also spooked investors, causing shares in the Chinese tech behemoth to dip 3.5% in Hong Kong.
Tencent has said it would comply with the new rules, but that it would apply them only to accounts created in China. That may sound like good news for users of WeChat in overseas markets, which Tencent is eager to tap. The reality, however, is that content on WeChat (known as Weixin in Chinese) is already subject to an ambiguous censorship that appears intentionally designed to confuse its users, no matter where they may be located.
The new regulations directly address a popular WeChat feature that distinguishes it from other mobile chat apps: public accounts. Though WeChat started as a mobile chat application similar to WhatsApp, it sought to challenge China’s then-dominant social media platform, the microblogging site Weibo, by building a blog platform directly within the app. Starting in 2012, users could subscribe to those public accounts –set up by everyone from news organizations to activists to brands like Nike and Sprite – and forward the content their onto their contacts.
It was this viral mechanism which likely concerned authorities and led to the new rules, which come roughly a year after a very public crackdown on Chinese social media led to the semi-neutering of sensitive discussions on Weibo. Under the new regulations, the ability to disseminate “current political news” will be limited to those public accounts authorized to do so by the government.
Though much has been made of the new restrictions, how WeChat already censors these public posts has been mostly overlooked—likely because it’s less obvious and harder to detect.
Unlike Weibo, there is no way to search for specific content on WeChat’s public platform, and thus no list of keywords to be blocked—and subsequently sussed out by researchers. Public accounts are routinely suspended—dozens were banned in the most publicized sweep back in March 2014—but unless the account being shut down is especially influential, most disappear without much of an outcry.
The one obvious indicator of censorship on WeChat is an error message — “This content has been reported by multiple people, and the related content is unable to be shown” – that users occasionally see when browsing public posts. While the message makes clear that WeChat has removed a post, the source of the deletion is attributed to a WeChat users’ peers. If one takes the message at face value, WeChat is playing the role of an impartial moderator, letting users decide whether a piece of content is appropriate.
