WeChat begins to open its ‘walled garden’ to rivals by allowing links in one-to-one chats, heeding Beijing’s order

WeChat, the ubiquitous social media platform operated by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings, on Friday started to allow links to its rivals to be shared in one-to-one chats to comply with Beijing’s new requirements on Big Tech to unblock links.

The order by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for the country’s technology platforms to bring down the walls between them forms part of Beijing’s wider effort to encourage competition and curb monopolistic behaviour. At the same time, China’s internet market remains closed to foreign service providers such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

WeChat users can now access external links in the one-to-one chat channels after they upgrade the app to the latest version. For external links in big chat groups the company will develop more functions so that users can make their own choices, according to a statement published on the company’s official WeChat account on Friday.

To ensure “high-quality content on the platform and a good user experience”, WeChat said its principles for managing external links included preventing behaviour that violates laws and regulations, prohibiting behaviour that obtains excessive private user information and endangers network and data security, as well as excessive marketing. The platform will also give users more rights to make their own choices.

In addition, the company will build a reporting channel so that users can report links that violate laws and regulations, as well as create a rating system for external links, it said.