“We are going to silence the chatting groups”: Online rumors regarding the coronavirus outbreak have now been clarified

While the country’s government is dedicating resources and efforts into containing the coronavirus outbreak and frontline medical personnel are fighting against the disease, rumours, which appeared to be from the authorities, have spread over some of the WeChat groups, an online group chatting equivalence in China of that of Facebook Messenger and What’s App. One of these “warned”, “We had just received a notification from the network-supervision department that all the (WeChat) groups are forbidden to repost any unverified coronavirus-related content… Perpetuators shall be detained…” The rumours now have been clarified by both the WeChat team and public security regulators, as the former reiterated the very idea of WeChat being intended to provide its users with a convenient and private communication service and the latter verified that the rumours are not published by the public security authorities. (Aspada)