Last week state media reported that Xi Jinping is to chair a government body devoted to internet security. Whether the news portends ever tighter restrictions on free speech on the Chinese web, it may not amount to a potentially more constricting, if less actually devastating kind of censorship: adding your mother-in-law on WeChat.
According to the Xian Evening Post, friends of 25 year old Yang Dongying lost the most prominent voice in their "Moments" window (WeChat's version of the Facebook news feed) after his crippling decision to add his mother-in-law as a contact.
“Over Spring Festival I taught my mother-in-law how to use [WeChat] and immediately added her as a friend,” Yang told the paper. “Later I discovered that she would comment every time I updated my status. This made me feel nervous, and slightly awkward as well."
Yang stopped his public posting, fearing that the carefree tone and expression he typically uses on WeChat was too different from the more earnest guise he deploys in front of his mother-in-law. He didn’t want her to think that her son-in-law was "frivolous."
In a speech last week Xi Jinping declared he would turn China into a cyber-security power, and WeChat reportedly occupies an important place in his crusade to maintain stability online. It is unclear, though, what effect the new government body would have on the app; the messaging service has been found to be self-censoring in the past. But for the average layperson venting or chuckling on his or her “Moments” page, it appears that the most immediate check on speech is age-old: nosy in-laws.
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