The ABC has previously identified 12 Australian politicians with WeChat accounts registered in other people's names in China, including government ministers. Contact Echo Hui on Signal: +61 468 306 302 and on Protonmail: Please use this form to get in contact with the ABC Investigations team, or if you require more secure communication, please choose an option on the confidential tips page.
WeChat's rules also state that "the initial registration applicant shall not … permit any non-initial registration applicant to use the Weixin account." Do you know more? The agency used a Chinese national – in this case Mr Ji - as the account operator, in order to circumvent WeChat's regulations, which do not allow foreign nationals to operate public accounts. Like several other Western politicians, Mr Morrison's office set up a WeChat account through a Chinese agency. The ABC has been unable to contact Mr Ji and does not know why he made the sale or whether he did so willingly. “Apart from the influence on my daily life, I lost contact with most of my friends.Mr Huang would not say how much he paid for the account and said he would not hand it back to the Prime Minister's Office, because the transfer of ownership had been approved by WeChat. “Because my account is connected to many third-party apps, after it was blocked, I wasn’t able to use them,” a user on QQ - another Tencent-owned messaging platform - told Sixth Tone. On China’s Quora-like Q&A platform Zhihu, many users have shared their own experiences of having their WeChat accounts blocked, and the inconveniences it caused. In China, a country with over 1 billion active WeChat users, the platform is all but essential in daily life, from communicating with colleagues and ordering takeout to calling cabs and booking hospital appointments. The Shenzhen man’s death has sparked heated online discussion about who should own the rights to personal social media accounts. It also says that if Tencent finds or receives evidence that a user is in violation of the terms of service, WeChat “is entitled to remove or obscure relevant content at any time and without notice.” Violations include “endangering national security,” “spreading rumors,” and “disseminating obscenity,” among others. “To be honest, his message to that woman was a bit over the line,” the deceased’s brother told Sixth Tone without elaborating.Īccording to WeChat’s user agreement, all accounts on the platform belong to Tencent. WeChat’s public relations team was unavailable for comment Friday. The deceased’s relatives are currently awaiting the results of a police investigation. Tang said his family received 150,000 yuan ($21,850) in cash from the local subdistrict office during an arbitration meeting, though he doesn’t know whether the money came from Tencent. Tang added that his brother had messaged the Shenzhen police before killing himself to inform them of his decision: He provided his name and national ID number, and requested that they not tell his grandparents of his fate. Tang declined to share the video with Sixth Tone, citing the police’s request that he keep it private. “Because my brother runs a shop, losing access to the WeChat account had a huge impact on his business.” “He explained that Tencent had blocked his WeChat and he had failed to get in touch with Tencent’s customer service,” Tang said. The deceased’s brother, surnamed Tang, told Sixth Tone on Friday that he had found a video on his brother’s phone in which he ranted for several minutes about being upset by the punitive action taken against his account. The tech giant said it had blocked the deceased’s WeChat account for three days after another user reported him for harassing her and sending pornographic content. 15, according to an announcement Thursday from Tencent, WeChat’s large and powerful parent company. The 22-year-old killed himself after the ubiquitous messaging and mobile-payment app temporarily blocked his account. WeChat has made headlines in China this week over the death of a man in the southern city of Shenzhen.