DaileyB

Haven't heard much from Wuhan. My children's relatives don't speak English very well and we have to rely on Wechat translations. My children's cousin (about 40 years old) said "This too will pass." I have a friend born in Wuhan who tried to Wechat money to Wuhan and couldn't. I have also offered financial help, but there haven't been any takers.

moondog

DaileyB I don't understand what mean by send money to Wuhan. Personal WeChat accounts don't have a presence in the physical world apart from country specific requirements. Perhaps the recipient account was in the penalty box?

889

Wechat certainly keeps users somehow marked by their mobile numbers, And of course there's geolocation when signed in.

Not saying they do, but if Wechat wanted to set restrictions for "Wuhan" users, that wouldn't be difficult.

moondog

I've heard that they are blocking accounts where people use forbidden phrases, and that a lot of these are geo located in Wuhan, but I've heard nothing about disabling payment only.

889

I don't know whether it's being done. I'm just addressing what I took as your comment that Wechat personal accounts couldn't be restricted geographically.

DaileyB

I have no idea why it didn't work. However, my friend was born and raised in Wuhan and specifically mentioned that she tried to Wechat money to her brother and couldn't. I have never used Wechat money feature, so it wouldn't pop into my head to ask questions. The impression I got though was that she routinely Wechatted money to China or her family and couldn't do it this time.

sinoflyer

Wechat won't work for now, because Wuhan has been cut off from the Web.

jiejie

I wouldn't be surprised if the government has cut off Wuhan/Hubei from various social platforms to prevent "citizen reporting" of some of the more shocking realities that have leaked out in the past couple of weeks. But I find it hard to believe that the government would cut Wuhan off from the entire internet (or China intranet) since that's a lifeline for basic information and instructions to go back and forth between key departments.

DaileyB

At least 3 or 4 days ago, I Wechatted a friend in Wuhan with no problem. Don't know the current situation today.

plunet

From what I know there are no basic internal communication restrictions but anyone posting what are determined to be rumours or sharing information that destabilises social life they may find their online accounts or connectivity suspended.

STS-134

1. If the major social platforms all got blocked for everyone, that would likely set off a wave of panic since everyone would be wondering what they're trying to hide.

2. If the entire internet were cut off anywhere in China (except for maybe parts of Xinjiang or Tibet where foreigners are not allowed to travel), we'd definitely hear about it from the media (contrast this with India cutting off the entire internet for well over 100 days multiple times and there has barely been a peep out of the media).

moondog

Off topic, but if WeChat as a verb gains traction, I will be mortified.

sinoflyer

I have been going on the term, duan-wang (斷網), literally "severed Web," which has been used by media in Greater China (Taiwan, Epoch Times, Chinese exiles in Flushing, etc.) to describe the situation in Wuhan. Considering those sources, perhaps "cut off from the web" isn't necessarily the full picture but has little elements of truth to it.

"Duan-wang" had happened to Xinjiang during the riots 10 years ago. Back then, Xinjiang residents had much of their information cut off from the rest of the WWW and basically had access to only government-approved websites and internal sources of information. I can only assume that with the technology today the government can be much more selective in who has access to what kinds of web information.

STS-134

It's a cat and mouse game. Circumvention technologies evolve along with censorship. I mean, I had a friend who got free internet access from one of those airport hotspots. How did he do it? Well, although they were careful to block every protocol except DNS, they left DNS open to any DNS server in the world without authentication, so he programmed his DNS server to tunnel data traffic over DNS queries and responses. It was slow as hell but he was able to get data in and out.

trueblu

Not sure how this example would apply to the average person, and I include myself in that. Yes, the very few activist bloggers would be able to get their information out, maybe, but not the average Jo. It's genuinely possible that the average Wuhan resident hasn't tried to access anything except WeChat and gov approved sites the last 3 weeks...so maybe we can't really tell, but most major international news channels have been trying to keep in touch with 'local reporters' to some extent, would be surprised if none of those people had noticed anything.

tb