Tencent has long had a potent tool for muzzling critics: shut down their accounts. But in recent months the Chinese social media group has changed tack, slapping multi-million-renminbi defamation lawsuits on three bloggers who wrote about the company on its ubiquitous WeChat app.

“It’s very weird,” said Jianfei Yan, who was faced with a Rmb1m ($140,000) defamation lawsuit from Tencent in March after writing an article about the dominance of the “super powerful” WeChat platform and its potential for data breaches. “If Tencent questioned my comments, they could [have stopped] me publishing them on WeChat?.?.?.?but they just directly appealed to the court and sued me.”

Tencent declined to comment on the cases. But in a document submitted in May after a court hearing against Jihua Ma, another of the bloggers, it said it opted against deleting the offending articles on WeChat because doing so “would further cause damage to Tencent’s reputation”.