You are welcome to join our group chat, We are all nice people, and very few topics are off-limits.

Kind of hard to join a wechat group when you’re banned from wechat…..

We messaged each other tonight:D

there is different level of ban.
-the lowest is certain words not showing up in chat: you can say it, but others cannot see it...
-then is the ban in group chat
-then is the complete ban
Other than the last ban, you should still be able to contact custom service via the app itself, althought it does take a lot of effort to actually get a human...

You're right, I was permanently completely banned. I eventually reached out to customer service by continuously PM the official WeChat/Tencent account on other social media platforms. They told me they couldn't do anything because I was reported and banned by the "superior department".

I've had pretty good luck by calling these numbers 4009100100 / 95716 and experimenting with different prompt choices. That's general Tencent customer service (i.e. covers all of its products/companies), but you can talk with humans.

...without going into specifics (don't want to touch politics or anything personal), what led to the permanent ban?

I forwarded a Bloomberg news article (in Chinese). They told me that the reason for my ban was maliciously spreading rumors.

Yeah, that would do it. Bloomberg did a great exposé on top-level corruption in China back in the free-wheeling Hu/Wen days, and ever since then everything from them have been heavily censored. Although some of Bloomberg's hit pieces on China are actually dubious, like that 2018 spy chip story which multiple other outlets have found to not be credible.

Ironically, one year later, Chinese official media confirmed the news to be true. But my WeChat account never came back 😂

Gosh...I was about to ask what did you do...Then I saw your comments...

Just curious - did you forward a link, or a pdf?

I was wondering the same thing, but then it occurred to me that it wouldn't really matter to the current net nannies (their game is increasingly advanced).

I forwarded a link, and quoted a paragraph of it. I replaced sensitive names with emojis or other "slang" in an attempt to blur out these sensitive information. 🤷Obviously, the sensitive words library of GFW is updated faster than me.

Is it not possible to create a new account?

Yes. In fact, I have two additional accounts tied to US phone numbers that I use primarily as folders for content that I want to save (sort of like favorites). But, these accounts don't work with any payment related features.

In the event my primary account was blacklisted, I suppose I could try to register a new phone number​​​​​ (ideally with a different ID) and see if that did the trick.

As long as you have other phone numbers you can always create a new wechat account. Actually after I registered another account with a different number I managed to unlink my phone number from the banned account and link it to the new account. I forget how I did it tho.

yes, that is true.
as long as you have multiple phone numbers, you can create many WeChat account.
But to use money-related features, you will need to be authenticated with ID.
Now they are grey-test to register two accounts using same phone number

I would not suggest link your banned account number to the new account, there is a chance your new account get banned after you do so.

Just got a new phone, which the WeChat app tells me is a violation of their acceptable use policy 😂🙄🤦‍♂️ Can't make this stuff up.

I have the same phone number, I know my WeChat ID, and I know my password. I don't however, have my old phone, which has already been erased and traded in.

The app says that the account recovery option is only for people who have changed phone numbers, or who have forgotten their WeChat ID. Which option can I choose to get access to my account on my new phone, given that I have the same phone number, and I know my WeChat ID, and I know my password?

Thank you!

Are you using the English app? The Chinese app may have more functions.

I think there’s a password reset thing if your account is linked to a phone number. They text you a SMS (this works for foreign numbers too). Otherwise you can enter your password to login

FYI what you’re supposed to do is transfer the account from the old to new phone before wiping the old phone. Password reset probably means you lose all of your messages

cleaning up WeChat without deleting things you might like
 

While I realize there are probably a million places on the internet better suited for this query than here, since one of our recent conversations (in another thread) touched upon the topic, I figured I'd give it a try.

I want to remove junk files from WeChat (on my computer only, this time) while preserving recent conversations, sticker collections, favorites, and maybe some media files. So, I'm curious about best practices. If there are any automated ways to do this, please share your experiences/comments. Or, let's figure out what should and shouldn't be deleted.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...3e5fae1d7a.png
This is the top level view of my WeChat files. The wxid folder (I blocked out my actual ID) is the main space hog.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...bfe5f375f7.png
This the wxid folder (level 2).

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c523815160.png
And, here is the file storage folder (level 3), which seems to be the biggest within wxid.

I have to deal with this on several computers and it always amazes me just how messy it is, and how many files are held open whilst the WeChat client is logged in (it's in the local user folders and OneDrive creates sync errors for the many open files).

Is there actually any unique content on your desktop device? Would it just be easier to either delete the maze of locally synced WeChat files, or just uninstall WeChat desktop and start again?