Study: WeChat content outside China used for censorship

With more than a billion users, WeChat is the world’s No. 3 messaging app behind Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger. — ritzotencate/Visual hunt/CC BY-SA

BOSTON: Documents and images shared by users outside China on WeChat, the country’s most popular social media platform, are being monitored and catalogued for use in political censorship in China, a new report says.

Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto online watchdog, says in May 7’s report that WeChat users outside of China are thus unwittingly contributing to censorship. That would bar the content they share that censors deem inappropriate from being seen by users inside China.