WeChat’s New Privacy Controls

Last month, WeChat announced tighter privacy controls that restricted how mini-programs that run on the platform could collect and use personal information of the app’s users. Now The Drum has put together a deep dive into what the new controls mean, and PMG’s Ting Zheng provided her insights into why this happened and the likely ramifications.

Zheng said, “Giving competitors and third-party mini-programs access to data that could ultimately be used to abuse the system or used against WeChat was not ideal, and likely the primary reason they removed this type of access.”

“WeChat is likely following Facebook’s footsteps as back in September 2019, as a result of the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Facebook reviewed one million third-party apps and suspended tens of thousands that were collecting user data,” she added.

The article shared additional commentary from other experts in the Chinese advertising market, including executives at R/GA Shanghai and Mindshare China. And while the story talks about how Chinese companies are increasingly working to ensure some level of user data protection, Zheng reminds readers that “nothing is private in China.”

Originally published at https://www.pmg.com on April 22, 2020.