Australian Prime Minister, After Registering For A WeChat Account Using Unnamed Chinese Citizen, Finds His Account Sold To Someone Else
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220127/16492448369/australian-prime-minister-after-registering-wechat-account-using-unnamed-chinese-citizen-finds-his-account-sold-to-someone-else.shtml
WeChat is the massively dominant Chinese social media app (plus commerce, plus a lot more), but unlike other apps from China, like TikTok, it has mostly focused on the Chinese market, rather than markets overseas. Nonetheless, it has apparently huge popularity in Australia (which has a large Chinese ex-pat community). As it grew more popular, it's no surprising that Australian politicians began using the service -- even though in order to sign up for an account, you're supposed to be a Chinese citizen. Still, politicians such as Prime Minister Scott Morrison signed up for an account raising some concerns domestically -- though they were mostly dismissed by Morrision and his allies. This was true even after WeChat took down a post by Morrison that criticized a Chinese official.
Of course, things got a lot more interesting when Morrison's WeChat account recently... was somehow taken over by a new account called "Australian-Chinese New Life" and locked out Morrison and his staff from using the account. The new account posted: