China Cracks Down on Popular WeChat Users

WeChat is the second most popular social networking site in China. With 370 million users and a rapidly growing base, it may well be able overtake Weibo, which currently has a user base in excess of one-half billion people. However, the rise of social networking has become a concern to the Chinese government which does not acknowledge freedom of speech.

In fact, the Government has taken recent measures to ensure that the budding social network market does not end up circumventing state controls on what its citizens are able to read and by extension believe.

In February, President Xi Jinping formed a committee of sorts to deal with the subject of internet security. It turns out that the type of security they were likely concerned about wasn’t cyber terrorism or any other legitimate threat to national security. Rather, it was the security of operating sans criticism.

Now, it’s been announced that the accounts of some of WeChat’s most prominent users has have been mysteriously deleted. WeChat stepped forward to say the company had taken the steps to remove the accounts to promote a safe environment for other users and cited their policy against spreading “political rumors”. Presumably, the website wouldn’t be concerned with any criticism of the Canadian government or President Obama. So the likely nature of the “rumors” are related to the communist government. In some instances users with hundreds of thousands of followers had their accounts removed. By all accounts, the action is seen as the government targeting social media users.

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Source:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-14/an-chinese-crackdown-on-popular-app-wechat/5322730