![]() This explains why certain politically sensitive topics such as the Xinjiang re-education camps rarely appear in our dataset. A list of keywords is created and constantly updated by state censorship authorities, and then handed down to platform operators. The majority of Chinese social media platforms are equipped with a keyword filter that allows them to automatically censor sensitive information before it is published. This approach allow us to detect content that was removed after it was posted - but it misses content that was censored prior to publication. Out of these, roughly 11,000 have been removed by the internet censorship system. A copy of the post is then restored in the database and made available for public access.īy the end of 2018, a total of more than 1.04 million articles were included. When the system sees that a post has disappeared, it is detected as censored. Our team tracked more than 4,000 public accounts covering daily news through our computer program which visits (and periodically revisits) published articles and records the contents. Throughout 2018, we preserved censored posts in a publicly accessible database. In 2017, our team at the University of Hong Kong built a technical web “scraping” system for studying censorship on WeChat's publicly accessible pages. WeChat's massive user base and powerful social influence have also helped it to become a chief component China's rigorous censorship regime. WeChat's mobile pay system has become China's preferred method for payments of all kinds, due to the app's convenience and the sharp rise in the circulation of counterfeit currency in the country. In 2018, an estimated 500,000 WeChat official accounts were active every day, with roughly five billion daily page views. Individual users closely interact with public accounts by leaving comments and forwarding the posts to social groups. This creates an open space for quasi-public discussions about a wide range of topics such as personal stories, social issues, sports, technology and breaking news. In addition to regular citizens who typically maintain personal WeChat accounts, nearly all government departments, state-owned organisations, private entities and local communities have registered “public” accounts on WeChat, where they produce content similar to Facebook pages. According to data released by WeChat, the company now boasts more than 1.0825 billion individual users, along with more than 20 million registered public accounts. WeChat has the largest number of domestic users and the most extensive coverage of any social media service in the country. ![]() What began as a chat app, similar to WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, has become an essential tool for conducting many everyday activities, from communication to basic purchases and bill pay. In China today, it is nearly impossible to live one's life without WeChat. This post was written by Marcus Wang and Stella Fan of the WeChatscope, a research initiative at The University of Hong Kong.
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