On December 12, the topic labeled “WeChat group breakdown” briefly surged to the top of the trending topics on Weibo.
In the afternoon of December 12, some WeChat users experienced abnormalities in the group chat function. Issues included being unable to send or receive group messages, message asynchronization, inability to leave a group or modify group settings. Most users reported encountering these problems between 16:25 and 16:40, affecting both computer and mobile interfaces. Some initially thought it was an issue with their own network connection.
The founder of “Super Like Media” in Zhuhai and popular Weibo user “Super DaYi” uploaded screenshots related to the incident. He mentioned, “WeChat group breakdown? I couldn’t send messages, I even thought our work group got infected. Couldn’t add members to the group, couldn’t leave, couldn’t send messages, messages sent from computer and phone didn’t sync, very eerie… Thought it was my own problem, for a moment it felt like the world of ‘Black Mirror’.”
A netizen with the handle “WoodenFish34” commented, “No wonder some groups I left before are showing up again on the main page.” Another netizen, “EarnJustALittleBitEachTime,” said, “Why was mine remotely controlled by the computer directly, group messages scared me! Anyone else experiencing the same?”
Entertainment blogger “SpeakingLikeThis” observed, “Users attempted to send messages in group chats, but received repeated failures or showed ‘send successful’ yet the messages were not visible to others. Some, due to the lack of system prompts, sent multiple messages in a row, leading to the awkward situation of ‘spamming customers’ in work groups.”
Gaming blogger “BackInLove” stated, “This malfunction resembles a large-scale social experiment – when the foundational infrastructure for digital existence suddenly halts, the public’s emergency response reveals a deep reliance and fragile trust in instant messaging tools. Restoring the server is easy, rebuilding users’ expectation of ‘never going offline’ is hard, which might pose as a deep issue Tencent needs to address.”
At 4:58 pm Beijing time on December 12, the Tencent WeChat team officially responded, stating that a minor server hiccup caused a brief service disruption, and the related functions have been restored. WeChat has not reported any data loss or other security issues.