I’ve been living in China for 7 years and I really like Wechat, aside from the censorship and privacy concerns aside. It’s basically WhatsApp with a dumb timeli

I’ve been living in China for 7 years and I really like Wechat, aside from the censorship and privacy concerns aside. It’s basically WhatsApp with a dumb timeline — literally the algorithm is “show me everything my friends have posted, in chronological order”. It’s wonderful. That’s probably possible for two reasons. First, the app’s principal designer maintains Steve Jobs-level creative control on the product. Second, as a sibling pointed out, Wechat primarily makes money from other stuff besides posts going viral﹡. There’s not even a “repost” feature. You literally have to open the article, copy the URL, and create an entirely new post on your timeline. It cuts down on low effort sharing (of course, if you’re the government, you like this because it also slows the spread of so-called “improper information”) Facebook died for me when it became possible for me to see Nazis arguing in the comments of an article my grandma posted. I mean what the fuck, how did we ever get there. ﹡ which unfortunately involves vacuuming up as much data about every aspect of everyone’s life as possible. It’s impossible to understate how pervasive Wechat is: if you only have this app and no other, you can still live very comfortably here.