#WECHAT 450M WECHAT CHINA FREE#

But everyone has WeChat, so, naturally, people congregate on WeChat. A reoccurring problem I run into is that some of my sources only wanted to use WeChat to communicate, mainly because they had not installed any other messaging apps.įor sure, some immigrants also have WhatsApp, and some use Telegram. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been interviewing members of the Chinese diaspora around the world on the Chinese government’s activities undermining human rights abroad. The centrality of WeChat in information acquisition and communication among the Chinese diaspora, especially first-generation immigrants from China, should be a source of real concern elsewhere.

#WECHAT 450M WECHAT CHINA FREE#

Those free speech implications don’t just apply inside China.

But it is essential to remember that all Chinese companies are subject to government control. As international users are governed by terms of service and privacy policies of Singapore, it is unclear whether WeChat shares this information with the Chinese government. A recent study by Citizen Lab showed that WeChat surveils its users outside China to build up the database it uses to censor China-registered accounts. International WeChat users are estimated at between 100 million and 200 million there are an average of 19 million daily active users in the United States. WeChat has thus become a complete digital ecosystem where people in China lead their entire digital lives, and they are trapped in its controlled information environment without meaningful choice.Īnyone outside the country who wants to connect with people in China has to use what is available in China and thus also gets sucked into the Chinese government’s machinery of censorship and surveillance. Authorities also directly embed cybersecurity police units in major internet companies. At the same time, it nurtures a handful of domestic platforms like WeChat that censor and surveil their users on its behalf and hand over user data to the government when so-called sensitive information is discovered. The Chinese government shuts out foreign tech companies, puts up a Great Firewall to block websites that don’t comply with its censorship regime, and penalizes people who try to circumvent it. That’s partially a result of good programming and partially of deliberate policy. It is so convenient that for people in China it is as unimaginable not to have WeChat as not to have a smartphone. With monthly active users of over 1.2 billion worldwide, WeChat is a super-app that combines the functions of social media, messaging, financial services, travel, food delivery, ride-hailing, and other apps. WeChat isn’t just a tool for many users it’s a trap. Yet while the political motivation behind Trump’s ban and its free speech implications are reasons for concern, the threat WeChat poses should also be taken seriously. That has caused concern and upset-with good reason. It is unclear what exactly the bans will entail, but a ban on WeChat will likely create significant disruptions for communications and business transactions between people in China and the United States and possibly the rest of the world. transactions with the Chinese tech companies ByteDance, which owns TikTok, and Tencent, the owner of WeChat, related to those services.

6, President Donald Trump released two executive orders barring U.S. Americans are not using WhatsApp, WeChat, Snapchat and Line as much as other populations use it (in China WeChat owns a huge market share, for example)įor more details, have a look at the We Are Social infographic or share your comments below.On Aug.People share more than 1 billion text messages everyday through WhatsApp: that’s equal to the volume of SMS sent each day globally.Europeans are frequently using WhatsApp, and its penetration across mobile internet users is huge in some countries ( 74% in Spain, 61% in Germany and 56% in Italy).More than 70% of registered users are active every day.The WhatsApp acquisition is a strategical move towards expanding the Facebook ecosystem: everyday people send more than 1 billion messages using WhatsApp, and the ferocity behind the complaints when it was down last weekend are the most recent proof of its importance for more than 450 million people worldwide.īut what are the numbers behind the $19 billion acquisition? How many people are using it every day and what are they sharing?

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