WeChat

WeChat (Chinese: 微信; pinyin: Wēixìn ; lit. 'micro-message') is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing. It has been described as having "an almost indispensable part of life in China". To sign up for WeChat, a user may need to provide their bank card numbers or ask another WeChat user to scan their QR code. Accounts registered with telephone numbers in mainland China store data in mainland China and are governed by Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy. Non-Chinese WeChat users enjoy different, more liberal terms of service and a stricter privacy policy. WeChat users’ personal information (excluding users in mainland China) is stored in Singapore, or in Hong Kong for users in Hong Kong and Macau. WeChat users’ personal information may also be transferred to the Netherlands, Malaysia, and the United States. Personal information of international WeChat accounts can ultimately still be accessed remotely from mainland China by Tencent, and interactions between WeChat and Weixin users are subject to both services' policies. Activities on both versions may be monitored and shared with Chinese authorities on request. WeChat and Weixin censor politically sensitive topics and ban content deemed threatening to national security, social order, or state policy. Tencent regularly deletes LGBTQ official accounts without warnings. Tencent also blocks international WeChat accounts for content considered lewd material, violence, scams, rumors, or false ads. WeChat blocked or censored accounts of Americans and...