“Some Chinese state-run companies are restricting employees’ use of Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s popular domestic messaging app, citing security concerns, according to people familiar with the matter. This week, managers at at least nine state-run companies, including some of the nation’s largest, such as China Mobile Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp. and China National Petroleum Corp., told employees that any chat groups set up for work purposes on Weixin – Tencent’s dominant messaging app in China – could contain sensitive information and should be shut down and deleted, the people said. They also ordered employees to be cautious about using Weixin, which is the domestic sister app of WeChat, for work-related communications, some of the people said. These state firms haven’t publicly disclosed any security concerns over Weixin. The move comes as Beijing intensifies scrutiny into internet giants including Tencent, China’s most valuable company, as well as Tencent’s data-collection practices” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Most of the time we prefer to let this “irony is dead but [insert authoritarians like the Chicoms, Russia, American right wing politicians, etc] keep killing it anyway” trope speak for itself but man, this one is exceptionally impressive as far as such instances go. Not every day does a government that embeds malware in apps publicly tell its employees to stop using that malware.