On January 8, several California users filed a class action lawsuit against WeChat‘s parent company, Tencent, which was formally filed that day in the California Superior Court in Santa Clara County. The complaint alleges 11 counts, including that WeChat “violates California’s constitutional rights to privacy and free speech. The class action lawsuit, initiated and organized by human rights group Citizen Power, opens a judicial battle in the United States against WeChat’s widespread violations.
“According to a statement from Citizens Power, the organization prepared for the lawsuit over a period of nearly a year, interviewing hundreds of U.S. WeChat users, and “a 15-member team deliberated and selected the first six California WeChat users to join Citizens Power as plaintiffs, alleging that WeChat’s censorship, surveillance practices and policies that violate numerous aspects of California law.”
The statement noted that WeChat’s unlawful conduct and related policies, as the leading social media and payment application in the Chinese-speaking world, have resulted in significant economic, emotional and psychological harm to users and “asks the court to declare (WeChat’s) challenged practices and policies unlawful under California law, issue an injunction against its conduct, and award damages to defendants for the harm they have caused. “
The defendants in this case are Tencent USA, LLC and Tencent International Services, Inc.
Times Wang, the lead attorney in the case, told the Voice of America that Tencent (WeChat) was brought to court in California for several reasons: “First, California has a moral advantage, as there are many Chinese WeChat users in California; second, California law has a high degree of protection for privacy and free speech rights; finally, Tencent’s U.S. headquarters is in Finally, Tencent’s U.S. headquarters is in Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, California. These factors make it logical for us to initiate litigation in California courts.”
Mr. Wang runs North River Law PLLC in Washington, D.C., where his father is a prominent overseas pro-democracy activist.
“Dr. Yang Jianli, founder of Citizen Power, told VOA that President Trump had ordered a ban on WeChat in the U.S., but such an executive order has not yet been approved by U.S. courts because of legal issues related to First Amendment freedom of speech.
We are now informing all parties through legal action that WeChat is doing evil and we are demanding that it be punished,” Yang said. This way, WeChat users in the U.S. can still use it to contact their friends and family and will not suffer losses. At the same time, our plaintiffs can still claim damages from WeChat. Therefore, I think this is the best way.”
Yang said the road to litigation may not only punish WeChat and allow the first plaintiffs to receive compensation, but may also lead to more lawsuits against it; that is, using the rules of a democratic system to force it to change its behavior and stop it from continuing to use Western freedoms to undermine democracy and liberty.
The complaint alleges that WeChat is important to the Chinese-speaking community in California, who use it to contact friends and family and conduct business in the Chinese-speaking community; that it is the equivalent of Facebook, Paypal, WhatsApp and Instagram all in one platform for business, family and personal communications; and that the case arises from Tencent’s support of Chinese Communist Party regulation for profit and its surveillance of WeChat users in California, including the handing over of users’ private data and communications records to the government of the People’s Republic of China, causing a series of damages to users.
Bloomberg News said WeChat became the most popular social media application among Chinese-speaking people in part because China blocked other applications, such as Facebook and Twitter.
In addition to Citizen Power, the six individual plaintiffs, all of whom were joined anonymously, are California residents, three of whom are U.S. citizens and three of whom are citizens of the People’s Republic of China.
Two of the defendants named in the complaint, Tencent USA, LLC, are registered in the State of Delaware and headquartered at 2747 Pike Avenue in Palo Alto, California. The second defendant, Tencent International Services Limited, is registered in Singapore and located in Singapore International Plaza, and “is the contractor responsible for WeChat users in the State of California.
The complaint states, “WeChat’s service rules do not explicitly prohibit content that is critical of the party state. And the fact that such content is banned is not because, without banning such messages, WeChat is technically unable to function properly.”
The anonymous plaintiff number one in the complaint describes repeatedly having his WeChat account blocked, with the alumni group of which he is the group leader being the focus of attention. Most of the group’s friends are in China, including some classmates who work at the grassroots level of government. After being censored for politically sensitive information, he would continually rebuild the group.
Plaintiff No. 1 said that his classmates who work in government no longer continue to join because Tencent WeChat keeps targeting the group. He went to China a short time ago to meet with these classmates and encouraged them to join the group again. These classmates declined, saying they were afraid of being implicated because Plaintiff No. 1 was being targeted by the party-state and monitored by Tencent.
In addition, Plaintiff No. 1 said that one of his college classmates told him about several incidents that a conversation in this group had stirred up. This classmate told him that he had been called by Communist Party public security officers to discuss the activities of this WeChat group. The public security officers questioned the overseas members of the group, let’s say the No. 1 plaintiff, and warned the classmate not to criticize the party-state. In addition, the public security officers disclosed that they had private information about group members and group leaders, including those in foreign countries. The classmate advised Plaintiff No. 1 to be careful because the Party State was monitoring him.
In an article titled “Chinese censorship invades U.S. through WeChat,” The Washington Post said that some support Trump’s ban on WeChat use after WeChat users in North America said the App has prevented them from sharing content that is unsatisfactory to Chinese authorities.
WeChat is a prison, a concentration camp,” Zhou Fenglock, president of the nonprofit Humane China, told The Washington Post. For the United States, it is a Trojan horse that affects all levels of society. …… Therefore, WeChat must be banned.”
The article said many of those interviewed supported the White House ban; others did not support the ban but wanted the U.S. to pressure Tencent, the owner of WeChat, to stop content censorship.
The article also said that there are 2.3 million active WeChat users in the United States each week.
Wang Yuehui is a lawyer and political writer who lives in Orange County, California, and travels frequently between the U.S. and China for business. He told Voice of America that one of his WeChat accounts is fully blocked and one is half blocked: “The half blocked one means the domestic number can’t see you; the fully blocked one has all the content since I started using WeChat around 2012, and WeChat hasn’t given any reason for blocking it.”
Wang Yuehui said: “I don’t speak emotionally, I speak reasonably and set out facts, but I set out something that is not so timely and not so ‘politically correct’ for the Chinese government. I think this is the main reason why I often copy and paste the content from Twitter to WeChat and then forward it out. In fact, I can’t catch anything in my speech, and there is nothing in what I turn.”
Wang Yuehui reflected that he may have angered the authorities by frequently introducing Twitter, a channel banned in China, into the WeChat group.
In addition, Wang Yuehui has been writing a lot of commentary since early last year, and those that are politically related are “eaten by river crabs” immediately after they are sent out. Even if it’s about U.S. politics or the U.S. election, he said, the same thing happens, even the U.S. Constitution can’t be talked about, and not a word about China will be “eaten” now.
Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information, wrote an article for the Journal of Democracy titled “The Road to Digital Unfreedom: President Xi Jinping‘s Surveillance State,” stating, “In Xi Jinping’s 2012 In China’s ‘new era’ since Xi Jinping came to power, the government has greatly tightened its control over its already censored cyberspace, and spreading “rumors” online is punishable by jail time. …… Those who express unorthodox views online Those who express unorthodox views online can become the target of targeted personal attacks by state-run media. Surveillance and intimidation are coupled with blatant coercion, including police visits and arrests. ……”
The article notes that instead of limiting its defense of opposition activities, the Chinese government is using digital technology to monitor and control society, particularly through the use of “big data,” artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.
California WeChat users want to file a complaint in the form of a class action lawsuit seeking a court order to allow them to use the app without being subject to politically motivated censorship and surveillance.
Observers have noted that the six individual plaintiffs in this lawsuit against Tencent WeChat are anonymous “because they are afraid of the Chinese government,” while several individual plaintiffs in last year’s U.S. WeChat Users Coalition complaint against President Trump’s WeChat ban appeared in their real names “because they do not fear persecution by the U.S. government.
Wang Daishi, the lead attorney for the WeChat class action, told the Voice of America that they, as plaintiffs, are now waiting for Tencent to respond to the lawsuit and will then decide on their next strategy.
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