International users of Chinese messaging app WeChat could be helping the platform tighten its censorship system for users inside China, according to the latest report by digital watchdog Citizen Lab.
The app, with over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, is known to censor its users in China to ensure content falls within topics deemed acceptable by the Chinese Communist Party.
The report, however, found that communications between users outside of China are also monitored to help refine the app’s censorship algorithm for its users in China.
The findings revealed that overseas users are subject to “pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts,” Citizen Lab said.
Around 100 million people hold WeChat accounts registered outside of China, according to Munich firm Messenger People.
Inside China, the app offers a multitude of services ranging from chatting, shopping, marketing, banking to booking movie tickets and taxis.
Feeding a Censorship Apparatus
The report found that WeChat will screen images and documents that overseas users share with each other to build up a database it uses to censor its China-based users.
The researchers reached these finds based on experiments conducted between November 2019 and January. They set up two group chats: one containing only overseas users, and another containing overseas users and one China-registered account.
They found that when they sent politically sensitive images and documents in the chat solely containing overseas users, shortly after those files would be censored for China-registered users.
A user with a China account (L) attempts to send a politically sensitive image in a WeChat group Chat from Citizen Lab testing conducted in January 2017. (Courtesy of Citizen Lab)