WeChat has 19 million users in the US and is a lifeline for people across the Chinese diaspora.
on Tiananmen Square and Tibetan independence, which means users in the US are presented with China’s version of the story. It’s these aspects that raise red flags for disinformation and cybersecurity experts.
Whether the government’s concerns over censorship are enough to justify banning the service, or whether average users face an immediate risk, isn’t clear. The reason that TikTok, of all of the Chinese-owned apps, has faced such intense pressure is mainly because of its scale and reach. “There’s a huge difference between TikTok and those others,” Marrè says. “Even though they’re in the top 20, TikTok is the Leviathan.”
“It would render overall international communication harder and possibly more expensive,” Cociani says. “WeChat users in banned jurisdictions would need to resort to VPNs in a bid to bypass the ban—or their families and contacts would need to use VPNs to bypass Chinese censorship on foreign apps, such as WhatsApp and Facebook.”
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