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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