China’s First YouTubers Say SnapChat Uses a CCP Propaganda Map

China’s first YouTubers called SnapChat out for seemingly bowing to Chinese propaganda on Taiwan in a recent podcast.

Matt Tye and Winston Sterzel, hosts of The China Show (formerly ADV Podcasts), were the first YouTubers in, and were also longtime residents of, China. But they left China after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) targeted them, and now host a podcast.

Tye and Sterzel explained that the “nine-dash line” is superimposed by China over a section of sea and territory that they claim is theirs, including Taiwan. The CCP began claiming a couple years ago that it found this border line on an ancient map and that it gives them absolute right to claim the area as their own, the hosts added. “China has a hissy fit if you don’t have this absolutely ridiculous nine-dash line on [maps],” Tye said.

Tye then discussed a SnapChat image he said was sent to him by a friend living in Taiwan, a “friend spread” map on which SnapChat users identify their friends’ locations. The map had the nine-dash line, he said.  The American SnapChat map did not have the line, however.

As Sterzel said, if SnapChat really is using a Chinese propaganda map in Taiwan and not elsewhere, “SnapChat has to change.”