[mullen]

If someone in China starts harassing you or threatening you, just start sending messages that the two of you are conspiring to overthrow the Chinese government and the messages will stop real quick. These Chinese mafia types talk tough until you start sending anti-Chinese government copy-pasta to them and they shut up real quick.

[altairprime]

It's probably best not to declare war upon China in writing. Instead, ask how many students died in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. That specific phrase should specifically auto-alert the censors to a known forbidden topic, without resorting to threats against China.

How long of a lost phone message can one set, anyways?

[jimt1234]

This will absolutely work. My friend is from China, but lives here in the US. Most of her friends and family are still back in China. We communicate primarily over iMessage, but also on WeChat. About 2 years ago I sent her a video about the Tiananmen Square protests over WeChat by mistake - I meant to send it over iMessage. The next day she called me, really mad; her WeChat account was shut down, without explanation, and she knew exactly why (my WeChat message). But what's worse is many of her WeChat contacts also had their accounts shut down - not all of them, just her closest or most frequent contacts, like her family and close friends. My account didn't get shut down.

The impacted accounts were magically re-enabled 3 days later. No email. No notification. Nothing. It was a clear message: We're watching, all of you.

[squigz]

> It's probably best not to declare war upon China in writing

Why not? Is the Chinese government going to send some people to Canada to disappear me?

[mkbkn]

Or the phrase "Tibet must be a free country"

[kazinator]

> That specific phrase should specifically auto-alert the censors to a known forbidden topic

Heck, even get you flagged here, for that matter.

[MOARDONGZPLZ]

They don’t. I have tried this and other similar things such as sending images banned in China (but otherwise totally fine). Perhaps they weren’t in China I suppose.

[yumraj]

Serious question: have you tried this or are you theorizing?

[mullen]

This is a well known tactic to do to Chinese scammers or any person you don't want to talk to that is in China or has to go back to China.

[contrarian1234]

In my (limited) experience private one on one messages are not censored. Or at least this was the case several years back... It's possible things are more strict now.

At least in my tests on Wechat you could discuss tiannanmen square or whatever you want with individuals. Some stickers were censored on Wechat and wouldn't show up. I think images as well may be don't get delivered.

Virtually all censorship and cases of people being arrested are when people talk about these things in large group chats (if a group chat has more than X amount of people it needs to be "registered"). My impression was it's a government fear of things going viral and controlling the public sphere and not about creating a panopticon/state-terrorism

Again.. This might be out of date, but this was at least the case for a long long time.

[barfingclouds]

Or try this:

动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想