The Facebook messaging application WhatsApp faces a partial blockade in China amid the pressure of censorship by the government, leaving many unable to send text messages and share photos and videos through the platform.
Late last night, many surprised WhatsApp users and security researchers across the country took social media platforms and reported widespread outages of the WhatsApp service since Monday night.
Compared to the popular home application WeChat, WhatsApp has a relatively small number of users in China. In addition, it offers end-to-end encryption on its platform, while WeChat is unencrypted and highly monitored and filtered.
In a statement to Bloomberg Technology, a co-founder of GreatFire.org, which tracks the blockades, she said: “Chinese authorities want to be able to control all communications on the Internet. By blocking WhatsApp, they limit Chinese options for Send private and encrypted communications and force more and more users to adopt WeChat as their messaging application. “
