WeChat The most popular communication platform in the world for Chinese speakers. It is also a favorite tool for China’s Communist Party to steal data, censor, propagate and spread misinformation in the US, where the app has an average of 19 million daily users. Congress recently banned the use of TikTok on government equipment, and the Biden administration is reportedly seeking to go further by limiting access to user data to mitigate the app’s dangers. Given the enthusiasm to address threats emanating from a Chinese app, why is WeChat being overlooked?
First developed in 2011 by Tencent, WeChat is China’s “app for everything”. One billion people use it for texting, calling, videoconferencing, playing videogames, shopping, paying bills, sending money, reading the news, and more. In the US, it is the most important source of news for Chinese students, immigrants, and first-generation Chinese-Americans. But since it is a China-based technology product, WeChat is also a major part of Beijing’s mass-surveillance network. User activity is tracked, analyzed, censored and handed over to the government in line with Communist Party mandates. Algorithms are adjusted to promote the party’s narrative and downplay or censor information that runs against them, making the app invaluable to the party’s efforts to spy on and influence Chinese communities around the world goes. (Tencent said in 2020 that “user privacy and data security are core values” and that it was taking “seriously” reports that it surveyed overseas users.)
opinion | tiktok is bad but wechat is even worse
WeChat The most popular communication platform in the world for Chinese speakers. It is also a favorite tool for China’s Communist Party to steal data, censor, propagate and spread misinformation in the US, where the app has an average of 19 million daily users. Congress recently banned the use of TikTok on government equipment, and the Biden administration is reportedly seeking to go further by limiting access to user data to mitigate the app’s dangers. Given the enthusiasm to address threats emanating from a Chinese app, why is WeChat being overlooked?
First developed in 2011 by Tencent, WeChat is China’s “app for everything”. One billion people use it for texting, calling, videoconferencing, playing videogames, shopping, paying bills, sending money, reading the news, and more. In the US, it is the most important source of news for Chinese students, immigrants, and first-generation Chinese-Americans. But since it is a China-based technology product, WeChat is also a major part of Beijing’s mass-surveillance network. User activity is tracked, analyzed, censored and handed over to the government in line with Communist Party mandates. Algorithms are adjusted to promote the party’s narrative and downplay or censor information that runs against them, making the app invaluable to the party’s efforts to spy on and influence Chinese communities around the world goes. (Tencent said in 2020 that “user privacy and data security are core values” and that it was taking “seriously” reports that it surveyed overseas users.)