Tencent’s Pony Ma says 2021 WeChat photo privacy controversy was ‘misunderstanding’ that was fixed with update
- Ma described the issue as ‘a misunderstanding caused by cache acceleration of images’
- The 2021 WeChat photo issue sparked widespread privacy concerns at the time despite reassurances that the glitch had been fixed
Pony Ma Huateng, founder, chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings, has described a 2021 privacy controversy sparked by a photo issue with its all-purpose super app WeChat as a “misunderstanding”, according to a local media report.
Ma described the issue as “a misunderstanding caused by cache acceleration of images”, according to a report by Chinese media outlet Yicai on Monday.
He said the matter was solved by the roll-out of a new application programming interface within the operating system to fix the lag.
Tencent said at the time that the app was looking for new images to make it “faster and smoother for users to send photos”, and it only accessed the gallery when authorised by the user. The company also said it would cancel the scanning in a new version of the app.
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Yicai picked up Ma’s comments from CSDNnews, a tech news outlet run by the Chinese Software Developer Network.
