Chinese censors are crippling access to the country’s do-everything app for some users as part of a campaign to kill discussion of a rare protest in Beijing, an escalation in the Communist Party’s drive to cleanse the country’s internet of even the whiff of dissent.
The crackdown came after two banners condemning Chinese leader Xi Jinping were hung from a busy highway bridge in the Chinese capital early Thursday afternoon—a rare act of defiance in the seat of Communist Party power that captivated the country’s social-media users.
Hours after images of the banners began to circulate online, a large number of users reported losing access to
a super app that has become virtually indispensable for daily life in China.
Hundreds of complaints posted in a customer-service forum run by WeChat’s owner, Tencent Holdings Ltd., indicated the suspensions were imposed after users posted or reposted images of the protest to their contacts. Some users offered desperate, if somewhat circumspect, apologies.
One user referred to “an incident this afternoon” and apologized for engaging in damaging behavior. “Please, I have been using this account for 10 years, with many messages and pictures—very precious to me,” the user wrote.
Another wrote of losing WeChat access around 3 p.m. on Thursday and confessed to having shared “images that contained inappropriate content.”
Some curious internet users asked to see the images many were alluding to. “You’d be better off knowing nothing about them,” one user responded.
By Friday evening, Tencent’s customer-services forum on
a
-like social-media platform, was no longer accessible. Many users turned to a general forum run by Tencent to continue their petitions.
Tencent didn’t immediately…
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