WHATSAPP has begun working freely and consistently for some users in China despite a longstanding government ban on the messaging service, an unusual phenomenon for a country with some of the world’s strictest internet curbs.
Users of the Meta Platforms Inc. service in Beijing and Shanghai, who normally employ workarounds like a virtual private network to get on the service, have been sending and receiving messages without those tools.
Other social media services such as Signal and Instagram remain barred, part of a broad blockade of foreign internet platforms that critics have dubbed the Great Firewall.
It’s unclear how many people across China have been able to navigate WhatsApp during the period. The phenomenon hasn’t yet trended on domestic social media such as the Twitter-like Weibo. – Bloomberg