We reject:
- The omnipresent censorship and self-censorship
- Overloaded social network and unpredictable snitches
- Arbitrary termination of accounts and posts
- Cutting off our contact with the World Wide Web
We urge you: please invite your friends to register for Telegram, or bring your whole WeChat group over. You can join our Telegram newbies channel and explore the best practice in usingTelegram.
Let us create a new world in a place with no surveillance.
Rules of the movement: please post #freefromwechat + Telegram account detail + “Let us meet where there is no surveillance” to your WeChat Moments and other social media platforms
WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. It was first released in 2011, and became one of the world's largest standalone mobile apps in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Wikipedia
The novel coronavirus is an unforeseen epidemic. However, when discussions around this outbreak were restricted, the epidemic became a political catastrophe.
Since February 1, 2020, many WeChat accounts have been suspended or terminated permanently. This became a trending topic on Weibo, the largest social media platform in China. Most of the users didn’t even know what they did wrong. They were shocked. They complained to customer service, posted on other social media, or showed proof of their compliance to beg WeChat to restore their accounts. No one knows whether they would be successful.
But the damage is done and the cost is great. It was not until this moment that people suddenly realised they have such weak control over their own WeChat accounts. : Actually, we never fully owned our WeChat accounts.
WeChat didn’t just suddenly become like this. We’ve been used to WeChat Moments full of article links that cannot be opened and learning to avoid discussing certain topics or terms. We’re back to using pinyin again to convey our subtle views and became used to self-censoring in group chats to ensure the safety of the group administrator, as WeChat made them personally reliable for the discussion in the group.
WeChat has been censoring us, and we know it. The question is, is it the “bad guys” in our friends list or the algorithms of big data that are censoring us? What have we done wrong? What rules have we broken? WeChat never provided evidence. There are no transparent rules, open judgment or discussions. WeChat arbitrates everything. Therefore, we can only deepen self-censorship by rotating images, using vague terms or inventing new code, as if It was an arms race.
Unfortunately, we are always on the losing side. A self-deprecating joke posted to Wechat Moments(WeChat’s information flow) can be reported as inappropriate speech. A common fact can be a political rumor in the eyes of snitches. As a new generation of “pink guards”(young nationalist) are in all corners of China, Professor Zhou Peiyi from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was reported by her students for a complaint posted on her WeChat Moments. She was fired as a result. In this environment, the only safe WeChat Moments is one with no post at all. The blurring boundary between the public and personal. It’s even impossible to be a good ordinary person.
We want to behave tamely and stay within the boundary. But what constitutes an offense is increasingly unclear. In fact, the messages posted to a WeChat group by Dr Li Wenliang, the coronavirus outbreak whistleblower, is based on source.The messages that were labeled as “rumours” by the authorities were no more than a kind warning that Li Wenliang sent to his friends.
Dr Li’s speech in a group chat, supposedly a private space, was enough to be deemed “disruption of public order” by the police. We wrongly thought that WeChat provided a private space for personal communication. However, as a matter of fact, talking on WeChat is similar to yelling on the streets. There is no privacy to speak of. On WeChat, the boundary between the public and the private is blurry, resulting in a system that makes it impossible to be a good ordinary man.
We are under censorship by WeChat, while WeChat is also under surveillance by the authorities. Therefore, for its own safety, WeChat decides to silence us beforehand. .
The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto found that WeChat does not stop us from sending messages, but prevents others from seeing them. It has been confirmed that in a group chat some messages can only be seen by some of the group members, while senders would not get any notification. WeChat is like a parent who always says: this is for your own good. WeChat makes the decision of what should be said or what should be seen for us, treating us like little children.
Even before losing the ownership of our accounts, we have already lost full use rights of this product
The omnipresent censorship; the constant risk of being reported; the incomplete users’ rights; the arbitrary termination of accounts with no legitimate complaint process; and the exposure of our real identities without privacy protections - what have we earned in return for giving up safety, privacy and freedom? It might be true that WeChat is an efficient communication tool, and it provides us with seemingly rich information, and also allows tens of thousands of content creators to earn a living. However, more important issues have been hidden by the facade of “efficiency” and “vibrancy”.
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The articles you’re reading on WeChat do not allow linking to external web pages, thus preventing you from browsing sufficiently rich information. The original Internet is a large network made up by linking. WeChat by its nature is a local area network. Since in the WeChat ecosystem you cannot open external web links, the content on WeChat accounts are basically lonely islands - they can’t contribute effectively to the World Wide Web.
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The content on WeChat can be deleted at any time due to a violation of rules. As a result, they cannot set up a basis for future discussions. No author can tell if their well-sourced and informative article with over 100,000 views on a public issue, can survive one day or even one night.
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There is no in-depth discussions on public articles on WeChat, thus creating many narcissistic siloes. The comment section of WeChat public accounts allows the author to reply to a comment only once and commenters cannot communicate with each other. As for which comments will be published, it is all up to the owner of the public account. The so-called “comment section” only consists of “paid laughers” for the articles.
Closed, arbitrary, narcissistic - this is the product design logic of WeChat. In this environment, we can’t cite anything or be cited. We can’t save evidence. We can’t discuss anything or doubt anything. It is by nature filled with clickbait headlines, private lives exposed in the public,mind opium’ that entertains the readers, and radical prejudices.
What is meaningful discussion and speech after all? Meaningful discussion and speech can help gather the truth, guide consensus, help make judgments and drive action. In the noise of WeChat’s public arena, any debate of public issues will quickly disappear, let alone moving toward a movement for protest. This so-called “content economy” merely seems to make everyone forget about the dominating power in this system.
We need to make it clear that there is no social media inside the Great Firewall(GFW) that can enable us to evade censorship, the removal of accounts and content, or even trouble with law enforcement. WeChat is nothing but the tip of the iceberg in the oppression of free speech by the current regime. Comparing other social media and messaging apps, such as Douban, Zhihu, and Weibo, with WeChat is like the pot calling the kettle black. The elephant in the room has sucked up the oxygen we live on but we can’t do anything about it.
Fortunately, the Internet is huge enough to find other choices.
Telegram was officially launched in 2013 by the Durov brothers. Telegram Messenger LLP is an independent, non-profit company, which was headquartered in Berlin, before moving jurisdiction to jurisdiction for security.
Being free and secure is in Telegram’s DNA. It works fine as a substitute for WeChat:
- Telegram has groups, which can replace WeChat groups. The maximum number of people allowed in a group is 200,000. Public groups are google-searchable and users can join directly
- It has channels, which can replace WeChat public accounts. Channels can broadcast any content to its subscribers, including different file formats. There is minimal restriction on the content or the number of messages the channel can send. There is no approval for setting up channels and the owner can create discussion groups linked to the channel, providing an open and free platform for reader discussion.
- It runs Bots, which can replace WeChat’s mini-programs. The difference is that bots are very flexible, in that they can be introduced to any group. They can help to answer questions from users, create polls and send programmed messages. It can even be an interface for ride-hailing apps, or receive WeChat messages for you.
Telegram is relatively safe. There is minimal political censorship, and it is difficult for governments to obtain data from users. Telegram provides secret chat and burn after reading functions, and uses end-to-end encryption. Even the Telegram company cannot decrypt users' chat data. In addition, your account name and registered phone number can be changed at any time. This makes it harder for others to report a user. Even if reported, it will be difficult to track down a user.
Telegram has inherited the true ethos of the original internet. It is open with no cutoff from the World Wide Web. Its groups, channels and bots, if set to public, can be found by search engines such as Google. The groups range from alternative music channels to the latest updates on the novel coronavirus outbreak, or self-help groups set up after Wuhan was locked down. You can find interests and hobbies on Telegram through search engines, join groups and meet “your people”. This is the future of the internet us promised.
No matter what your political leaning is, from leftist, rightist, nationalist, globalist to just a bystander, speech is a way to manifest ourselves. It’s also the precondition for forming opinions and seeking truth. Truth that doesn’t stand to debate cannot be true. Talk that doesn’t drive actions remains just talk. By digitally immigrating to Telegram, we can fairly have free speech without fear, which should have been every Chinese citizen’s born right.
Digital immigration is like physical immigration in reality. It’s like entering an unknown and chaotic space, requiring curiosity and adventure spirit. Different to those who left the politics of their motherland behind through immigration and became satisfied with the peace and quiet in foreign lands, digital migrants are determined to change reality. They are trying to solve real world problems in cyberspace, to recognize their fates but do not submit to it.
Welcome to join the Telegram newbies channel, and discuss the best practice in using Telegram:
Translated by Linda, JY, Xia