WeChat is not letting its users in China to talk about Covid-19

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Covid-19 (aka Coronavirus) is a big topic of the year. Not only has the virus taken thousands of lives in China, but also spread to other countries and regions at a fast pace. The circumstance has led people to discuss it widely on the Internet, be it sharing new updates or providing ways to prevent the virus. However, there are some platforms in China that censor words that are related to the virus, and one of them is WeChat.

In a study carried out by a group of students from the University of Toronto, it has been proven that Wechat and platforms like YY, a Chinese-version of Twitch, are banning their users from discussing Covid-19. At first, the group created three accounts in WeChat, which two of them are Canadian accounts and another one is from China. Later on, the group text to each other using different accounts, and shocking results were being found.

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Using the account based in China, it appeared that the user is not able to see any terms regarding the virus in his or her conversation. On the other side, the person who used a Canadian account was still able to see the texts that were being sent. From there, you can see how strict the policy is within the chat app. In the end, it has been found out that a total of 512 words have been censored in WeChat.

Furthermore, there are opinions suggesting the censorship should be removed, as the factual information of the virus is not being shared among the Chinese citizens. Other than that, words like the name of the doctor, Li Wenliang, who first discovered the virus in China has also been censored. With the censorship, the citizens might not be getting information about the virus including the ways to prevent it, and that is not going to help with the situation. It is also suspected the government is the one who is controlling behind this scene.

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