Account suspension as boundary clash: Censored experiences of China’s digital platform users

Despite acknowledged as a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, state censorship has been relatively less understood from the perspective of everyday experiences of ordinary citizens. Furthermore, the role of the digital platform is often missed when the censorship phenomenon is studied in authoritarian societies. This research focuses on account suspension which is both a form of censorship and a moderation decision made by the digital platforms. Based on in-depth interviews with 27 participants whose WeChat accounts had been suspended for their speech related to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study investigated how did they make sense of account suspension and what were the impacts of account suspensions on their everyday life.

The findings indicate that account suspension was generally understood by the participants as the clash between their assumed boundary of the permissible speech and the boundary of state intolerance practiced by the platform company. Being uncertain about the exact boundary of the permissible speech, the participants relied on their past experiences of state tolerance to participate in the public discussion. However, their assumed boundary of the permissible may unexpectedly clash with the boundary practiced by the platform company, which was subjected to shifting considerations. The impacts of account suspension on the digital platform went beyond the violation of the right of free speech, including participants’ sense of self-destruction, troublesome reconnection, and economic loss. These sanctions practiced by the platform company usually succeeded in discouraging users from participating in public discussion without the direct appearance of the authoritarian state. In contrast to the common narrative of bold subjects fighting for internet freedom, this study reveals the nuanced experiences of the censored subjects in the context of the authoritarian state and also shows that how account suspension can be understood as the intersection between state censorship and platform moderation in the authoritarian setting.