The takedown of WhatsApp represents a significant failure for its parent company, Facebook, whose founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been aggressively courting the Chinese government to reinstate access to the social media platform. SEE ALSO: Death of Liu Xiaobo highlights power of China’s censorship machine However, the crackdown on operators on the fringes of Chinese communications is evidence the Party means business this time. Despite the fact that WhatsApp is relatively less popular than Tencent’s WeChat network, many prefer it because officials don’t pay as much attention to it and the company insists on protecting users’ anonymity. WhatsApp has come under constant tinkering from China’s censors, and its service regularly blips out. The app deploys end-to-end encryption, which means that only the users with the right encryption key can access whatever information is being passed back and forth, so much so that even WhatsApp and Facebook can’t access what’s passing through its servers. WhatsApp has a reputation in the encryption community for its security strength, which is likely what caught the attention of Chinese censors. “This is not the typical technical method in which the Chinese government censors something,” Mr. WhatsApp is one of a handful of messaging apps that employ encryption technology.
He added that appeared as if the Chinese censors have developed a specialized software that could interfere with text messages which rely on encryption technology. He said to the NYTimes that his company had been tracking disruptions of WhatsApp in China since last Wednesday, and that it efforts had become widespread by Monday. “Essentially, it seems that what we initially monitored as censorship of WhatsApp’s photo, video and voice note sharing capabilities in July has now evolved to what appears to be consistent text messaging blocking and throttling across China,” Kobeissi told The Verge.īrian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, speaks at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California. SEE ALSO: China cracks down on Whatsapp, reveals new developments in image censorshipĪccording to the New York Times, an applied cryptographer at the Paris-based Symbolic Software research startup, Nadim Kobeissi, said that the service has been broadly disrupted, while reporter Katie Stallard for ABC News in China said on Twitter that she has been unable to access Whatsapp even on a VPN, which is itself unreliable. The restrictions on photo and video sharing were lifted after a few weeks, but now it looks like WhatsApp in China might be biting the dust for good. The summer was filled with complaints from users who reported not being able to log into their accounts, or videos and photos not being sent through. WhatsApp has come under scrutiny by the Chinese government, with this latest development following hot on the heels of widespread disruptions back in July. I can't get onto WhatsApp without a vpn now, which is also intermittently not working.