Wechat from @TencentGlobal is the third most popular social media platform in the world, primarily because it is the de facto standard for Chinese social media, rolling up many other services like identity and payment.
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Having conquered China, Wechat's new growth will come from the rest of the world, and it has aggressively courted non-Chinese users - and while Tencent acts as an arm of the Chinese state in conducting surveillance and censorship in China, non-Chinese users weren't censored.
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But that doesn't mean they weren't being spied upon - nor that the usage of non-Chinese users didn't power Chinese censorship efforts.
In a major new paper, the University of Toronto's @citizenlab reveals that Tencent spies on non-Chinese users, too.
citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-cha…
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In a major new paper, the University of Toronto's @citizenlab reveals that Tencent spies on non-Chinese users, too.
citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-cha…
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They proved that by looking at what happened to the censorship of Chinese accounts when non-Chinese accounts exchanged documents - including image files - that violated Chinese censorship rules.
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They were able to show that shortly after two non-Chinese Wechat accounts exchanged a document containing words blacklisted in China, the document itself would be blacklisted for Chinese users, too.
It's a pretty conclusive smoking gun.
eof/
It's a pretty conclusive smoking gun.
eof/
