In order to build up its censorship algorithm, WeChat surveils international accounts to decide what gets through to China-registered users. A Citizen Lab study finds that the messaging app blacklisted more than 500 keyword combinations relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On May 7 2020, the Citizen Lab published a report that documents how WeChat (the most popular social app in China) conducts surveillance of images and files shared on the platform and uses the monitored content to train censorship algorithms. This document provides a summary of the research findings and questions and answers from the research team.
WeChat communications conducted entirely among non-China-registered accounts are subject to pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts.
