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As a China-approved messenger application would anyone trust this as their primary mode of communication? This is not meant to be snarky or biased. Considering

by daveguy 10y ago

As a China-approved messenger application would anyone trust this as their primary mode of communication? This is not meant to be snarky or biased. Considering the control China has on citizen communication (eg the great firewall), what guarantee does anyone using the app have that all data isn't being fed through the Chinese version of the NSA? Also: how much of the growth can be attributed to less competition in the Chinese app market?

dengnan 10y ago
In short, there is no guarantee. Any message could be deleted at any time for no reason.
- alexkon 10y ago
  How often do messages get deleted?
  - nayuki 10y ago
    Try sending a sensitive keyword.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      Maybe not if you're in China.
  - Markoff 10y ago
    often, they are very fast deleted from your Moments (Wall), heck is you use sensitive keyword they won't be even delivered to the other party in PRIVATE message, so much for this amazing messenger we should look up to
    - Danihan 10y ago
      Big government intervention is not the app's fault.
      - mehdyc 10y ago
        But could it be part of the reasons for its success ?
        cookiecaper 10y ago
        Yeah, that's a great question. The reason they have the luxury of not caring about their user count could be that the government takes care of that issue for them by interfering with their competitors.
      - Markoff 10y ago
        WeChat is censoring the messages, not government, they just give them order and WeChat gladly accept terms in exzchange for China monopoly and protection from international competitors, same go for Facebook, Google and million other services, which Chinese just stole and rebranded. So how exactly it's not their fault they are sleeping in bed with Chinese government?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sfifs 10y ago
There is ridiculous amount of competition an innovation in the Chinese app market. Every time I visit China, I'm surprised by something new the folks can do with mobile. That innovation is starting to spill into India with Chinese company investments. A year ago, mobile payments in small shops and businesses were ubiquitous only in China, now they're proliferating in Indian cities too. The Western markets are quite tame in comparison.
- daveguy 10y ago
  Good point. I said app market, but I specifically meant messaging app market. Still a good point, just because they don't have Signal or Facebook (not that I'd trust it) doesn't mean they don't have strong competition in their own field of approved apps.
  - anuh 10y ago
    There was a ton of competition even with mobile messaging before WeChat launched. And the competitors were other Chinese apps.
- lewisl9029 10y ago
  I don't doubt that there must have been quite a bit of competition before WeChat came into dominance, but is that still true today? If WeChat is indeed so overwhelmingly dominant in people's lives in China, what strategies do the startups there use to compete with WeChat's core offerings like chat, social networking, payments, and to what degrees of success? Or do startups their just accept WeChat as a piece of infrastructure and try to innovate by building things on top of their platform instead of competing against them directly?
  - ganfortran 10y ago
    Wechat controls social connection. It is like you cannot compete with Facebook on social as well here. So, you have to cooperate with them.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
mirimir 10y ago
I wonder how many humans are trawling WeChat for "bad" messages. In addition to the bots.
- azurezyq 10y ago
  On WeChat it is really hard to see "bots". Tencent discourage them to do so. There is no supported way for connected apps to send messages automatically -- End users' confirmations are mandatory. So you'll see a more organic feeds.
  - Markoff 10y ago
    he was talking about censorship made by Wechat for CCP order
eratins 10y ago
I do, but that's because I don't live in China.
zhte415 10y ago
Every local company I've seen in China run themselves to an extent on WeChat. A group chat for all employees, a group-per-team, ad-hoc groups for ad-hoc teams. It is assumed to be faster (people check more regularly) than email, less formal, more direct. And the boss can see everything (given they're in the group). Great for teams that want to look busy. I dislike it, as looking busy is different from being busy, but this is a large part of the mainland China work-ethic. For international companies, megacorps in particular, it is not used officially, but still often gets used, with a disturbing amount of client-specific information leaking that the head-office would strictly discipline should they know, but they don't. To edit: This was always possible before with QQ, and QQ does have phone apps, but QQ didn't have this casual business-use to the extent WeChat does today.
gurkendoktor 10y ago
Random high-profile anecdata for why you should NEVER trust a China-approved messenger: http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao-imprisonment http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao... tl;dr Chinese assistant of a German newspaper was arrested for political signalling on WeChat. This is a tool that has almost certainly been used to find and kill people in lower-profile cases. It's disgusting to see that HN/SV people will never care about that part of tech. This thread makes me feel terrible.

by daveguy 10y ago

dengnan 10y ago

In short, there is no guarantee. Any message could be deleted at any time for no reason.

alexkon 10y ago
How often do messages get deleted?
- nayuki 10y ago
  Try sending a sensitive keyword.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Maybe not if you're in China.
- Markoff 10y ago
  often, they are very fast deleted from your Moments (Wall), heck is you use sensitive keyword they won't be even delivered to the other party in PRIVATE message, so much for this amazing messenger we should look up to
  - Danihan 10y ago
    Big government intervention is not the app's fault.
    - mehdyc 10y ago
      But could it be part of the reasons for its success ?
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        Yeah, that's a great question. The reason they have the luxury of not caring about their user count could be that the government takes care of that issue for them by interfering with their competitors.
    - Markoff 10y ago
      WeChat is censoring the messages, not government, they just give them order and WeChat gladly accept terms in exzchange for China monopoly and protection from international competitors, same go for Facebook, Google and million other services, which Chinese just stole and rebranded. So how exactly it's not their fault they are sleeping in bed with Chinese government?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sfifs 10y ago

There is ridiculous amount of competition an innovation in the Chinese app market. Every time I visit China, I'm surprised by something new the folks can do with mobile. That innovation is starting to spill into India with Chinese company investments. A year ago, mobile payments in small shops and businesses were ubiquitous only in China, now they're proliferating in Indian cities too. The Western markets are quite tame in comparison.

daveguy 10y ago
Good point. I said app market, but I specifically meant messaging app market. Still a good point, just because they don't have Signal or Facebook (not that I'd trust it) doesn't mean they don't have strong competition in their own field of approved apps.
- anuh 10y ago
  There was a ton of competition even with mobile messaging before WeChat launched. And the competitors were other Chinese apps.
lewisl9029 10y ago
I don't doubt that there must have been quite a bit of competition before WeChat came into dominance, but is that still true today? If WeChat is indeed so overwhelmingly dominant in people's lives in China, what strategies do the startups there use to compete with WeChat's core offerings like chat, social networking, payments, and to what degrees of success? Or do startups their just accept WeChat as a piece of infrastructure and try to innovate by building things on top of their platform instead of competing against them directly?
- ganfortran 10y ago
  Wechat controls social connection. It is like you cannot compete with Facebook on social as well here. So, you have to cooperate with them.
seanmcdirmid 10y ago

mirimir 10y ago

I wonder how many humans are trawling WeChat for "bad" messages. In addition to the bots.

azurezyq 10y ago
On WeChat it is really hard to see "bots". Tencent discourage them to do so. There is no supported way for connected apps to send messages automatically -- End users' confirmations are mandatory. So you'll see a more organic feeds.
- Markoff 10y ago
  he was talking about censorship made by Wechat for CCP order

eratins 10y ago

I do, but that's because I don't live in China.

zhte415 10y ago

Every local company I've seen in China run themselves to an extent on WeChat. A group chat for all employees, a group-per-team, ad-hoc groups for ad-hoc teams. It is assumed to be faster (people check more regularly) than email, less formal, more direct. And the boss can see everything (given they're in the group). Great for teams that want to look busy. I dislike it, as looking busy is different from being busy, but this is a large part of the mainland China work-ethic. For international companies, megacorps in particular, it is not used officially, but still often gets used, with a disturbing amount of client-specific information leaking that the head-office would strictly discipline should they know, but they don't. To edit: This was always possible before with QQ, and QQ does have phone apps, but QQ didn't have this casual business-use to the extent WeChat does today.

gurkendoktor 10y ago

Random high-profile anecdata for why you should NEVER trust a China-approved messenger: http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao-imprisonment http://www.zeit.de/feature/freedom-of-press-china-zhang-miao... tl;dr Chinese assistant of a German newspaper was arrested for political signalling on WeChat. This is a tool that has almost certainly been used to find and kill people in lower-profile cases. It's disgusting to see that HN/SV people will never care about that part of tech. This thread makes me feel terrible.