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WeChat joins Weibo to display location when users post on public accounts, as it complies with efforts to censor rumours and content deemed harmful

  • The measure is to maintain ‘internet order and crack down on rumours’, WeChat said
  • China’s most popular online platforms have all implemented the location display functions, covering well over a billion internet users

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WeChat will display the publisher’s location based on their IP address alongside news posts on WeChat Public Accounts. Photo: Shutterstock
Jiaxing Li

WeChat, China’s most popular app with over 1.2 billion users, will start displaying user locations when a person publishes content on public accounts, making it the latest Chinese social media platform to sign up to tightened censorship following a similar move by Weibo.

WeChat will display the publisher’s location based on their IP address alongside news posts on WeChat public accounts, and the function cannot be turned off by users. Other major social apps implemented the change last week.

“Recently, some national and world news has attracted a massive amount of attention,” the platform said in an announcement on Friday. “We notice some users pretend to be people familiar with the matter, fabricate and spread disinformation online, which has caused a harmful effect in the internet space.”

The measure is to maintain “internet order and crack down on rumours”, WeChat said. The platform will display the province or municipality where users are posting from, and the country of the user’s IP address will be displayed if they live abroad. On Thursday, Twitter-like social media platform Weibo imposed similar measures.

WeChat’s move means that China’s most popular online platforms have all implemented the location display functions, which cover well over a billion internet users in the country and many overseas.

Last week, ByteDance’s news aggregator Jinri Toutiao and its domestic version of TikTok, Douyin, said locations will be displayed on user profiles. The same move was made by short video platform Kuaishou, online forum Baidu Tieba, and lifestyle community Xiaohongshu. Twitter-like Weibo has already started to show user locations on its profile page and alongside each post this week.

Over the past year, China has stepped up efforts to “clean up” the internet, and platforms that fail to censor “improper” speech have been repeatedly fined and punished by regulators.

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