The Chinese government has been infamous for banning various social media websites and applications so there freedom of speech which develops hostile elements towards the government are decreased. However, this is not the first time that the famous internet messaging platform has been banned in China. A few months before, WhatsApp media and file sharing had been banned followed by a full ban after a few days. This ban got lifted after some days due to some unapparent reasons.

Previous Instances

Widely used social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc. have also been banned in most parts of China since a long time. This event may lead to disruptions between the relations of Facebook with China. Facebook owns WhatsApp and may suffer losses because of this ban due to the humongous user base in China.

Facebook has a feature which censors inappropriate content and help continuing the usage of Facebook with regulated content in order to favor the wants of the Chinese government. Situations for Facebook have also been really tense in other countries such as USA and Russia where fake news remains a problem. In this case, it is pretty apparent that the bonds between Facebook and China will no longer be strong.

How Companies Have Tackled Banning

In this case, it is said that WhatsApp may be launched as a redesigned application under an inconspicuous company in order to allow continued user flow from one of its largest user demographics around the world. For instance, Facebook launched its Photo and Video sharing app “Moments” under the name “Colorful Balloons” under a company named “Young Media Limited”

Why Ban WhatsApp?

The main reasons for the ban of WhatsApp are due to the encryption method which can be seen being used in other apps that do not provide a favorable gateway for media censorship in the country.

Chances are that the ban may be lifted if WhatsApp agrees on changing its encryption method for the country. However, no reports indicate towards the happening of the same in the near future.

Article by Arnav Nagpal. The post WhatsApp Completely Banned in China appeared first on Above Android.