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Today's Paper | March 15, 2026

Published 04 Mar, 2020 11:18am

China's WeChat has been censoring keywords about coronavirus: study

China’s most popular messaging app, Tencent-owned WeChat, has been censoring keywords about coronavirus since as early as January 1st, an analysis found.

Popular Chinese livestreaming platform YY has been censoring coronavirus content, too, according to The Verge.

To make this determination, the research group Citizen Lab scripted group chat conversations and sent them to three test WeChat accounts, two in Canada and one in China.

It’s not clear why the two companies decided to censor keywords about coronavirus, though it’s possible they were ordered to do so by the Chinese government, said the publication.

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