The original video uploaded by the creator racked up 5 million views before it was taken down, according to someone familiar with the matter. The video could have been seen by millions of Chinese people that night. Every single version, as well as sympathetic stories that comment on the video, was immediately removed.
Eric Liu, a former internet censor in China who is now working with the US-based outlet China Digital Times, says that the amount of censorship happening late at night in China was surprising. It requirescensorship employees to work overtime.
The leaked orders from local governments to remove content related to the video appeared online. Tech companies were ordered to clean up any video, screenshot, or derivative content without exceptions.
This is not the first time that a protest has arisen due to censorship. The night when Chinese doctor Li Wenliang died and again when a story about another Chinese doctor Ai Fen was rigorously censored, it happened.
The new video is mostly spread through the WeChat Channels, a young video sharing product that has struggled to build an audience for. Channels allows a user to post videos for an hour, which can be shared with friends and distributed to the public.
In response to the popularity of TikTok's domestic version, Channels was released in January 2020. In the two years since, Tencent has used every tool to promote Channels, including offering monetary incentives for creators, live streaming concerts by A-list celebrities, and bundling the product with WeChat, an app that is already used by more than a billion.
Popularity grew slowly. The average time a user spends on Channels is 35 minutes, which is one-third of the time it takes in Douyin.
On the night of April 22, WeChat Channels took center stage.
It was the product decisions that made it easier for Channels to become a tool of protest. To attract new users, WeChat made it easy for users to register a Channels account, while it can take days to be approved to register a traditional publishing account. Many people were able to open public-facing accounts and instantly upload hundreds of versions of the video.
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