Australian Senate Committee Recommends Government Ban on TikTok Be Extended To WeChat

An Australian Senate committee has recommended a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from federal government devices be extended to China's most popular social media platform, WeChat. From a report: The Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media also recommended in a report late Tuesday that social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter should become more transparent or be fined. Committee chair James Paterson said on Wednesday the report's recommendations would make Australia a more difficult target for the serious foreign interference risks that the nation faced. "It tackles both the problems posed by authoritarian-headquartered social media platforms like TikTok and WeChat and Western-headquartered social media platforms being weaponized by the actions of authoritarian governments including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter," Paterson told reporters.

Why would anyone outside of China want to use that

[Shipwack]

Why would a person living in Australia have WeChat on their phone in the first place, let alone on a government phone. Granted, it's a necessity if you are visiting/living in China for purchases and travel, but it has no use anywhere else. It's spyware X10!

Re:

[jonadab]

> Why would a person living in Australia have WeChat on their phone in the first place

Australia has a fair few people living in it at any given time (college students, among others), who have immediate-family members (parents, etc.) living in mainland China. It's difficult to communicate with people who reside in mainland China _without_ using WeChat or something equally under the CCP's thumb, because most of the alternatives are blocked by the Great Firewall. So a lot of Chinese nationals living abroa

Re:

[Shipwack]

> Why would a person living in Australia have WeChat on their phone in the first place Australia has a fair few people living in it at any given time (college students, among others), who have immediate-family members (parents, etc.) living in mainland China. It's difficult to communicate with people who reside in mainland China _without_ using WeChat or something equally under the CCP's thumb, because most of the alternatives are blocked by the Great Firewall. So a lot of Chinese nationals living abroad, continue to use WeChat in order to communicate with friends and family back home. Which, yes, does make it easier than it would otherwise be, for the CCP to monitor their citizens abroad.

Very good point, I hadn't considered that. Thank you for expanding my knowledge.

Re: Why would anyone outside of China want to use

[DNS-and-BIND]

Because it's not backdoored by the corrupt, politically partisan US intelligence community. All the others are. Who cares if TEH COMMIEZ get our data, they're not a threat to us, while the intelligence community IS.

Re:

[mjwx]

Why would a person living in Australia have WeChat on their phone in the first place, let alone on a government phone. Granted, it's a necessity if you are visiting/living in China for purchases and travel, but it has no use anywhere else. It's spyware X10!

Australia is a multi-cultural society that is by and large, welcoming to foreigners and foreign culture (yes there are some glaring racists, but most Aussies are not like that). So there will be Chinese people using it (immigrants, students, Australians with family in China) and there shouldn't be any restrictions against them using it on their own devices.

Like TikTok this is for government owned devices and devices that deal with government data. They aren't banning it from Australia and when the govt (

Thank you everyone

[vladoshi]

Yes, our government banned TikTok because of it's Chinese ownership but did not ban the Chinese owned and run messenger service that only works in Chinese. In our politicians defence, it was all Greek to them.