![]() According to a report published by Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based in Toronto, messages that contain keywords related to sensitive topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet or the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong are censored in the app, be it in private or group chats, and this without users’ knowledge. The service initially started as a simple messaging app, but has grown on a massive scale and now encompasses gaming, mobile payments, ride hailing and e-commerce operations. WeChat is without a doubt China’s most popular messaging platform, and has more than 806 million monthly active users. ![]() Several arrests have already been reported by a Freedom House study in 2017: Falun Gong (a banned spiritual movement in China) practitioners have been jailed for sharing their beliefs online on WeChat, and young Uyghurs were imprisoned as well only for watching Islam related videos. Just last month, a social media user named Wang Jiangfeng was sentenced to two years of imprisonment by the Zhaoyuan People’s Court after he was found guilty of referring to the head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party as “Steamed Bun Xi” in a group conversation on WeChat and QQ, proving the Chinese Government is able to access private conversations at any given time. The new Cybersecurity Law will henceforth require all user data to be stored on severs located within the country’s physical borders, which, according to the foreign business community and internet freedom advocates, will put users under threats of having their private online activities and conversations seized or used for prosecutions: local authorities have already expressed their intentions, and the usual citizen could be jailed based on internet content shared or viewed on social media. Regular internet user arrests would also potentially increase, as the Chinese security forces would be able to obtain private information from internet companies and keep a close watch on what is being exchanged online. However, the new regulations could have an unprecedented impact and paralyze local online activities on a huge scale. Censorship has also been very strong on the hugely popular platform WeChat for the past 3 years. Such operations already took place in the past, as online opinion leaders with audiences of several millions of followers saw their accounts deleted in 2013. ![]() Under the new rules, millions of internet users could see their social media accounts deleted or suspended, should they share politically related material or not, even though it is thought that the enforcement of such regulations will both be selective and erratic. As of now, it is not exactly clear what will happen next, but it is thought things will evolve according to the Chinese government’s next decisions and the citizen’s reception of the new measures. China is known to exert one of the world’s most severe censorship on its citizens, specifically online, and the Cyber Administration of China (CAC) is planning on pushing the restrictions even further. China’s new Cyber-security Law will come into effect on June 1st, and may very well end up shaking the whole Chinese internet sphere, with online censorship rising to unprecedented levels.
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