Is China the Big Brother that watch over its citizens from the harmful contents of social network? The question arose once again after the country decided to block WhatsApp mobile messaging application on its border.

To be fair, WhatsApp was blocked twice, first in July this year by crippling its media sharing capability. Then by the end of September, even the simple text-messaging between devices was blocked, rendering the instant messaging application to absolute uselessness.

WhatsApp becomes the latest victims to China’s firewall

Since the ancient time, the China civilization showed their determination in keeping out with the out-desired elements of the societies. In the past, they turtled themselves from the marauding nomadic barbarians with Great Wall, nowadays they constructed a great digitalized firewall for media censorship.

Besides WhatsApp, there is a list of banned social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Google and so on. For every banned application, China has replaced them with the own app versions approved by the government such as RenRen, Moments, Weibo, Youku, Baidu and so on. For WhatsApp replacement, the Chinese response is WeChat which may act like a super app in combining various components together.

Censorship on sensitive issues

Due to the timeliness of the complete ban on WhatsApp, the conspiracy theorist conjured that the clampdown may have to link to the upcoming 19^th National Congress meeting taken place in Beijing, China on 18 Oct 2017.  During the meeting, the Chinese policymakers will discuss national policy as well as electing new leadership for the country.

For buildup toward that important date, the Chinese authority might want to prevent any unauthorized mass gathering characterized in Arab Spring where the role of social media was in centerpiece for organizers to form rally and uprising.

Perhaps the idea is too far-fetched at the moment, but it was understandably things in social media are being monitored. Perhaps why WhatsApp is banned in China due to its block end-to-end encryption which prove harder for monitoring.

It was reportedly that the Chinese censorship have been active in removing anti-Islam phrases in social media as websites have since been blocked after massive clean-up efforts over the net.

Failings by WhatsApp

China is not the only country to fall out with the popular messaging application that amassed over 1 billion users worldwide. Other countries have brushed with it too such the case of Brazil. In that episode, Brazilian law enforcers asked its telecom providers to block the messaging services thrice as it failed to handover information for investigation.

In last year, WhatsApp also created an uproar in Europe after the messaging app wanted to share data contacts with Facebook for the first time. The move disappointed users as WhatsApp compromise its positions about data sharing with other social network. Later, WhatsApp rolled back its decision and cut down its data sharing with others.

Similarly, WhatsApp had a face-off with laws-makers in United Arab Emirates (UAE), as the swearing over the messaging platforms invited fine of USD60,000 and deportation under a new federal law in cities such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Verdict

To be fair, all government tends to “look after” its citizens in one form and another. And companies that provides social networks service often have to choose whether to comply with the ever stricter censorship and regulations to operate. Thus, sometime the response from the authority may be as straightforward as – either you are in or out. Therefore, choose your side wisely for you have already be warned.

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