Internet censorship in China is fairly common, but up until recently, WeChat had been something of a haven for those who wanted to spark political discussions about the news and the Chinese government. Recently, the company that owns WeChat, Tencent Holdings, deleted 30 popular accounts, saying that they violated the company's policy.
WeChat is one one of the most popular messenger apps in China with 270 million monthly active users. Accounts on the messaging service can either be private or public. Many of the most popular public accounts send links to news and political discussions to their followers, in hopes of inspiring a more open dialogue in China. The deletion of 30 such accounts has sparked a lot of outrage in China, as the accounts' creators and followers cry censorship.
In recent months, the Chinese government has indeed increased its crackdown on those who disseminate controversial news online. The Internet, which is notoriously difficult to control, has caused a lot of problems for repressive regimes around the world, from Ukraine to Syria. It seems that the Chinese government is working to nip the problem of online dissent in the bud before it spills over into something more tangible.
As WeChat has amassed more followers, it has come under harsher scrutiny. Just last year, users were banned from mentioning anything about the newspaper Southern Weekly because the paper had dared to speak out against Chinese censorship of the free press. WeChat did not prevent censorship then and it certainly hasn't this time either. Accusations of censorship fell on deaf ears and Tencent Holdings defended its actions.
"[We] continually review and take measures on suspicious cases of spam, violent, pornographic and illegal content. We also welcome users to report to us online or through our 24-hour hotline," Tencent Holdings said in a statement.
As a result, anyone who had subscribed to the deleted public accounts received an error message from WeChat, saying that "this account has violated WeChat administrative platform policies and has been forbidden from using all official account features."
One owner of a recently deleted account, Liu Shengfei, informed his followers on Weibo that his WeChat account had been deleted. Shengfei is a tutor at the Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. His account, TeachingRoom, was very popular with WeChat users.
"To our 63,000 readers we say goodbye, we hope not too long from now to see you in a new, free world," he wrote on Weibo.
