The Beijing protest that turned thousands into ‘digital ghosts’

To fans of Mr. Graceless, a little-known indie band based in Beijing, October 13 was a bizarre and memorable day. Many of those who tried to share “Sitong Bridge,” the name of one of the band’s songs, on WeChat, China’s do-everything social media app with over a billion active users worldwide, received a notification indicating that their accounts had been permanently banned for “violating the platform’s policies.”

Many of them then flocked to Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, to comment under the trending hashtag “Tencent Customer Services” about their attempts to reclaim their accounts.

The fans were not alone.

On the same day, hundreds of thousands of users posted on Weibo, trying to figure out why their WeChat accounts were being permanently cut off from the app’s social functions. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of similar posts also appeared on the customer-service forum run by WeChat’s parent company, Tencent.

Some just wanted to publicly pledge they would no longer break the platform’s rules. They desperately wanted WeChat back, an app that is essential to daily life in China, used as it is as a digital wallet, a ride-hailing app, bill-paying platform, news feed (similar to the Facebook Feed), directory, blog, and much more — all in addition to its original purpose as a chatting software. Perhaps most importantly during these current times, WeChat is the app most people open to access their COVID health code, which is used to enable or restrict one’s public mobility.

The latest all-sweeping online censorship was sparked by a public protest at Sitong Bridge in Beijing’s Haidian district. On October 13, a banner was unfurled at that bridge, calling on Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 to be removed from office and criticizing China’s COVID-zero policy.

ZC, a freelance writer who ran a public account on WeChat with 12,000 subscribers, was one of the victims of this censorship effort. In the early afternoon of October 14, he scheduled a post containing part of the lyrics of the song “Sitong Bridge,” to be published in a few hours. Before the post could go live, WeChat notified him that his public account had been permanently suspended and his personal account restricted from speech for 30 days, even though none of his followers had even read the offending article.

“Since then, I’ve tried to contact customer service, but I have not received any response at all,” said ZC, who requested not to use his real name for privacy purposes. Disappointed, he took the most common route for those with suspended accounts: he registered a new one. So far, he has secured one-third of his prior subscribers and roughly 600 of his 3,800 personal contacts from his previous account.

The only way to resurrect a suspended account is by calling WeChat’s customer services. According to Tencent, one can expect to receive a response from its customer service team within seven days, as each account is limited to one appeal.

Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

How Chinese censorship works

The Chinese censorship apparatus has been slowly tightening its screws for the last several years, but it is always turned into overdrive during sensitive times such as large political meetings. And there was no larger political meeting two weeks ago than the 20th Party Congress. After the bridge protest, “Sitong Bridge,” “banner,” and “I saw it” were among the many phrases expunged from the internet. Briefly, even “Beijing” was restricted as a search term.

Automated systems that scan keywords and popularly circulated images are widely adopted by platforms to effectively implement censorship, said Lotus Ruan, senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, focusing on digital censorship against civil society. As a result, anyone who posts words or images that fit into a target range — which can be narrowed or broadened according to the occasion — might immediately trigger a digital response — which, again, can be tweaked, anything from a deleted post to a suspended account.

“During a politically sensitive period of time,” she said, “Chinese social media platforms often expand the range of targeted keywords and images, since over-censoring content makes it easier for them.” This way, authorities are less likely to punish the platforms themselves, as they have done in the past.

Social media platforms in China are responsible for controlling their content under some vague guidelines for promoting a “civilized internet” and strengthening “socialist core values.” Last year, Weibo, failing to observe and implement relevant regulations, and was fined more than $2 million by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

WeChat and other Chinese social media titans have clamped on “incorrect” speech as a result. According to the CAC, more than 22 million illegal messages were purged from the internet and 1.34 billion accounts were “dealt with” in 2021.

Yaqiu Wang, senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch, compared the recent mass suspension of WeChat accounts to the authorities’ implementation of COVID zero.

“In both scenarios, over-implementing ‘correct’ measures isn’t an issue for those at the helm, but under-executing relevant policies can lead to disastrous political results and economic consequences,” she said. When it comes to pleasing users or pleasing authorities, Wang added, platforms are keenly aware of which is more important.

Digital ghosts

After posting a censored article that condemned the country’s COVID measures, a WeChat user named Caohou was restricted from contacting anyone on the platform through messages and phone calls. As indicated in a WeChat post, he could still receive external calls via the platform, but — strange as this sounds — people couldn’t hear his voice on the other end. His voice was essentially censored.

Caohou’s friends, who had no clue that his account was restricted, thought he was intentionally avoided them. Caohou wrote that he felt like a “digital ghost,” somewhere between “half-dead” and “half-alive.” It’s one thing to censor, but it’s another for a platform to mislead other people into thinking his account was active.

“It’s like being buried under the soil with your eyes wide open,” Caohou wrote. “While your friends and family still think you’re alive, only you know you’ve been digitally dead a long while.”

Xinjin, who had her account suspended three hours after sharing a picture of the Sitong incident in a private group chat around 1:30 pm on October 13, noted that other people in the same group chat also received an official notification between 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

Per an auto-generated reply sent by Tencent, Xinjin was told that the social function on her account had been permanently restricted, citing the account as “violating relevant laws and policies on the internet.” She is now prohibited from contacting anyone, but is able to log in and view updates and messages from friends. “I’m a lonely digital soul,” she told me.

Like others, unable to reach a customer service agent for clarification, she had no alternative but to register a new account via a new phone number and rebuild her contacts. So far, she has found fewer than 200 out of the 1,300 contacts from her previous account.

“I heard no appeals would be approved during the 20th Party Congress,” said Xinjin, a journalism student quoting a Tencent insider familiar with the matter. She is not holding out hope that her ban will ever be lifted, since the Party’s leadership reshuffle only signaled a heightened crackdown on defiant speech.

Where’s the line? No one can be sure

But not everyone who posted censored content was automatically banned. Some were merely suspended, while others suffered no consequences. Why the seemingly arbitrary standard?

“Some content that I was able to share through my previous account can’t be shared via the new account anymore,” ZC noted. Uncertain about what WeChat is exactly censoring, ZC hinted that he has tried to keep his head low during this sensitive period to “avoid trouble.”

Indeed, the relationship between authorities, platforms, and users is set up to encourage self-censorship. The consequences of violating relevant policies only flows on direction: toward the user.

It is not clear if repeated violations of relevant policies will prohibit users from registering new accounts. But there is evidence that it could draw additional scrutiny from the platform. Dongling, a cyberspace protester who has had his accounts closed on multiple occasions, told The China Project that he has been banned indefinitely from registering a WeChat Official Account, which is equivalent to a Facebook “page.”

“My national ID has probably been blacklisted by the app, meaning any accounts linked to my identity are unable to launch a public account,” he said. “They try to isolate my voice from reaching other like-minded souls.”