Can WeChat defend its social media predominance by blocking its competitors?

As WeChat turned eight years old this month, China’s most popular mobile app is facing mounting complaints about its monopolistic behaviour, which has stifled competition in the world’s second largest economy.

The Tencent Holdings-operated super app, which now counts more than 1 billion active users and is known as Weixin on the mainland, has become such an indispensable online platform that internet companies introducing competing social media products use it to reach and sign up potential new subscribers.

On Saturday, WeChat called out rival platforms – including ByteDance-owned news aggregator Jinri Toutiao as well as short video apps Huoshan and Xigua, and NetEase Cloud Music, operated by video games competitor NetEase – for luring its users to share external links through promotions like cash rewards and virtual gifts, which it said has disrupted the platform’s group chats and Moments social sharing function.

WeChat moved to ban such links based on rules “expressly prohibiting external links that entice the users to share”, according to a statement from the social media platform’s management.

The restriction was even applied to ride hailing service Didi Chuxing, in which Tencent has a stake, and e-commerce services provider JD.com, which WeChat also cited for violating its rules. Non-promotional links, however, remained accessible to all WeChat users.