WeChat Censorship

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.

Citizen Lab research showed that, at the time, WeChat seemed to use a relatively crude comparison between banned images and content uploaded to the site in order to decide what to block.