I've just been locked out of WeChat (or Weixin as it is known in
Chinese) and, to get back on, have had to pass through some pretty
Orwellian steps - steps which have led others to question why I went
along with it.To get more wechat news, you can visit shine news official website.
One reason is that life in Beijing would be extremely difficult without
WeChat. The other is that I could not have written this piece without
experiencing the stages which have now clearly put my image, and even my
voice, on some sort of biometric database of troublemakers.
I was
in Hong Kong to cover the enormous candlelight vigil marking 30 years
since the People's Liberation Army was ordered to open fire on its own
people to remove the mostly student protesters who'd been gathering in
and around Tiananmen Square for months in June 1989.This moment in
history has been all but erased from public discourse on mainland China
but in Hong Kong, with its special status in the Chinese-speaking world,
people turn out every year to remember the bloody crackdown.
This time round the crowd was particularly huge, with estimates ranging up to 180,000.
Naturally I took photos of the sea of people holding candles and
singing, and posted some of these on my WeChat "moments".Chinese friends
started asking on WeChat what the event was? Why were people gathering?
Where was it?
That such questions were coming from young professionals here shows the
extent to which knowledge of Tiananmen 1989 has been made to disappear
in China.
I answered a few of them, rather cryptically, then suddenly I was locked out of WeChat.
"Your login has been declined due to account exceptions. Try to log in
again and proceed as instructed," came the message on the screen.
Then, when I tried to log back in, a new message appeared: "This WeChat
account has been suspected of spreading malicious rumours and has been
temporarily blocked…"
It seems posting photos of an actual event taking place, without commentary, amounts to "spreading malicious rumours" in China.
I was given time to try and log in again the next day after my penalty had been served.
When I did I had to push "agree and unblock" under the stated reason of "spread malicious rumours".
So this rumour-monger clicked on "agree".
Then came a stage I was not prepared for. "Faceprint is required for security purposes," it said.
I was instructed to hold my phone up - to "face front camera straight
on" - looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to "Read
numbers aloud in Mandarin Chinese".No doubt I have now joined some list
of suspicious individuals in the hands of goodness knows which Chinese
government agencies.
In China pretty much everyone has WeChat. I don't know a single person
without it. Developed by tech giant Tencent it is an incredible app.
It's convenient. It works. It's fun. It was ahead of the game on the
global stage and it has found its way into all corners of people's
existence.
It could deliver to the Communist Party a life map of pretty much everybody in this country, citizens and foreigners alike.
Capturing the face and voice image of everyone who was suspended for
mentioning the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary in recent days would be
considered very useful for those who want to monitor anyone who might
potentially cause problems.
When I placed details of this entire process on Twitter others were
asking: why cave in to such a Big Brother intrusion on your privacy?
