Twitter and Telegram grow in China amid protests against the zero Covid policy
Twitter and Telegram, which are blocked in mainland China and accessible only via virtual private networks (VPNs), are among the country's most downloaded apps in recent days following widespread protests over pandemic restrictions, according to the market research firm of the Sensor Tower app.
Twitter rose to eighth place among the most popular free iOS apps in China on Monday, two days after protests erupted across the country, starting in Shanghai, according to data from Sensor Tower. Even though the app had dropped to 26th place by Thursday, it was still significantly higher than its previous 100th place.
Meanwhile, messaging app Telegram, which allows you to chat in encrypted form, jumped to sixth place on Sunday in the social networking category, where it stayed for four days before slipping slightly to seventh place on Thursday.
Both apps are currently available for download to users with a Chinese Apple ID, but can only send messages or view content using VPN services to bypass China's Great Firewall, a sophisticated censorship system that blocks many foreign websites.
In a rare display of outright defiance in China, protests spread to major cities from Beijing to Chengdu and university campuses this past weekend to express their outrage at the deadly fire in Urumqi, where it is believed the victims were blocked due to the restrictions imposed by Covid-19.
Photos and videos of these gatherings circulated on Twitter and Telegram, while those on WeChat and Weibo, two of China's most used social networking platforms, were quickly deleted.
“Using Twitter is very easy if you've used Weibo,” commented a user on Apple's App Store in China on Tuesday, comparing the two microblogging platforms.
On the Telegram App Store page, a user left a comment on Saturday asking for help learning how to use the app. Another reported problems in the application on Wednesday and asked for an update.
The Chinese government is trying to crack down on the use of foreign apps. In Beijing and Shanghai, police stopped pedestrians near protest sites to check their smartphones for VPNs or foreign apps.
Twitter's response to content related to the Chinese protests will be a testing ground for its new owner Elon Musk, who is pledged to protect free speech and address the platform's spam problem, but whose electric vehicle company Tesla counts on China as a major manufacturing hub and consumer market.
On Twitter, at least two users who posted content related to the protests in recent days had their accounts suspended, with notices saying they had violated rules against platform manipulation and spam. The accounts were subsequently restored, but this is the sign either that someone is reporting this content, or that some "Chinese hand" has remained among the Twitter moderators. Now it's up to Elon Musk to prove that he can lift these limitations on true, and risky, freedom of speech.
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The article Twitter and Telegram grow in China amid protests against the zero Covid policy comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/twitter-e-telegram-crescono-in-cina-nel-mezzo-delle-proteste-per-contro-la-politica-covid-zero/ on Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:38:27 +0000.