WeChat user is charged US$38,000 after spreading fake news in Canada, putting scrutiny on a freewheeling political arena
- Toronto construction worker Wu Jian has lost a defamation lawsuit for using WeChat to spread what a judge called malicious falsehoods about a community leader
- The ruling suggests Canada’s courts will punish people who use WeChat to spread lies, even if the number of readers is unknown, a tech lawyer says
A court ruling in Canada could put the brakes on WeChat’s freewheeling political discourse in the country, with a Toronto construction worker ordered to pay more than C$50,000 (US$38,000) after spreading what a judge called malicious falsehoods about a local community leader on the Chinese social media platform.
The recent ruling showed that Canada’s courts would punish WeChat users for defamatory posts, even if their readership was unknown, said a business and technology lawyer who has previously warned that the platform had become “littered with users who hide behind their aliases and post rumours, false stories”.
WeChat has been a hotbed of Canadian political activism that sometimes strays from local norms.
Last January, federal Liberal candidate Karen Wang used WeChat to urge supporters in Burnaby, British Columbia, to vote for her because her opponent, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, was “of Indian origin”. She was swiftly dumped by the party.
In October 2018, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) began an investigation into WeChat messages that were offering C$20 (US$15) “transportation fees” to municipal voters in Richmond, BC, by a group that supported a slate of conservative-leaning candidates. They later disavowed the messages and no charges resulted.
