The Chinese Diaspora and the Attempted WeChat Ban: Platform Precarity, Anticipated Impacts, and Infrastructural Migration

Abstract

In August 2020, the U.S. President issued an executive order to ban the Chinese-based social platform WeChat, alleging that WeChat posed a national security risk. WeChat is a vital application for Chinese diasporic communities in the United States. The ban’s status was uncertain for several months before it was temporarily halted and later revoked in 2021. Through interviews with 15 WeChat users and online participant observation, this study examines the anticipated impacts of the potential WeChat ban and participants’ reactions. We find that participants described negative consequences of the potential ban, including adverse network and economic effects and disruption of community-building efforts. We also find that many participants considered WeChat to be critical infrastructure in the United States, as it has become an indispensable part of their daily lives. To frame participants’ experiences, we introduce the concept of infrastructural migration—the process of users relocating to another digital media service that embodies the properties and functions of infrastructure or moving to an assemblage of different applications that meet their infrastructural needs separately. We then discuss implications for designing for infrastructural migration and future considerations for HCI research with diasporic communities.