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Looking at the comments I think that most of commenters missed an important point. It's not just that the app is tracking users, but the messages sent by any no

Looking at the comments I think that most of commenters missed an important point. It's not just that the app is tracking users, but the messages sent by any non-Chinese user help the regime censor the content for Chinese users. In other words, if you use WeChat, and you send a photo of something that happened in Hong Kong along with some text that explains it, then you actually help Chinese authorities to censor this photo in China. > Upon analysis, files deemed politically sensitive are used to invisibly train and build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system. Also I think it's super cool how they did the research.

yingliu4203 6y ago
Many Chinese-Americans have no choice when they need to communicate with family and friend living in China. No outside communication tools allowed in China.
- fiblye 6y ago
  Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking. Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me. China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.
  - xemdetia 6y ago
    Yes, it really is getting out of hand. If there was a reasonable equivalent that was an alternate (like an email address used to be), that would be one thing but even with a US phone all of a sudden your phone dies and you are completely stranded and even sites you used to be able to access are now no longer accessible because they are asking for phone numbers and confirmation of said numbers. It feels really awful.
    - lazylizard 6y ago
      Why not setup your own? Or use email? Stuff like deltachat works over smtp? Letschat is 1click deploy on heroku?
  - seppin 6y ago
    > meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. I've never heard it phrased this way before, dangerous indeed.
  - devtul 6y ago
    We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away
    - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
      >Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety". The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.
- idra 6y ago
  "Have no choice" is false. Fortunately, email still works. As does any messenger through a VPN. Using Wechat is simply being complicit with censorship out of laziness.
  - fiblye 6y ago
    Keep in mind that most major domains outside of China are blocked. Chinese services aren't going to be any more lax with surveillance than WeChat and have the same registration requirements. You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window when they think you're actively dodging filtering to that extent.
    - idra 6y ago
      The parent is talking about communicating with friends and family. My point is not about evading surveillance, it's about not using one of the main tools of the CCP censorship apparatus. If you're inside China and care about your safety, you would think twice about sending "questionable" messages even on the most secure channel because you're still physically vulnerable to rubber hose cryptanalysis.
      - fiblye 6y ago
        And I didn't say anything about sending anything. If anybody messages you or your family/friends receives something suspicious something and the Party suspects you're intentionally avoiding their watchful eye with a custom mail server, I think you might end up worse off. All it takes is one goofball finding a vulnerability in your system and dropping a joke image or bit of text to royally screw you. Furthermore, while it's nice in theory to deploy your own servers and get all of your friends and family to exclusively chat through your homemade application, it's very unlikely. WeChat is basically an OS all its own these days. It's a social network, chat app, payment app, shop, and more. People are incredibly reluctant to give up convenience unless they're very motivated and technologically inclined. And for people inside of China, getting a VPN or non-Chinese messenger is quite difficult thanks to locked down app stores and most people communicating only through phones. I don't use Facebook and won't budge on that issue. My parents won't use anything that's not Facebook. If they won't take 10 seconds to register for anything else, then they certainly won't want to deal with anything I'd try to scrap together. The end result is that I make a VOIP call to their phone about once a month and they ask me to just give up and use Facebook at some point. It's probably a similar situation with most people wanting to leave XYZ terrible messenger.
- kevinchen 6y ago
  I don’t think this is true. iMessage works in China (they can’t block all of Apple)
  - gaoryrt 6y ago
    But iMessage in China was supported by yunshangguizhou(https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5%B7%9E https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5...), a state-owned enterprise.
woutr_be 6y ago
I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.
- 88840-8855 6y ago
  lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont. For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.
  - woutr_be 6y ago
    You don't think censorship is a big deal? That's exactly the reason why their government gets away with it, because people see it as no big deal.
    - balola 6y ago
      If what the gov is doing (ostensibly) makes them rich, e.g. they can afford cars and condo prices double every few years, them yes, the majority of people doesn't care.
      - rorykoehler 6y ago
        You can have those things without the oppression. Correlation doesn't equal causation.
        taneq 6y ago
        I don't think anyone's saying oppression is necessary, merely that bread and circuses have always been enough to placate the masses. Nobody revolts on a full stomach.
stevespang 6y ago
Can't wait for Elon Musk's Starlink constellation over all of China. Next will be stealth missions to drone in Starlink internet boxes "transceivers" to as many citizens as possible. Will getting caught with one result in the death penalty ?
HenryBemis 6y ago
I feel/fear that we will learn (in 10-20 years from now) that ZOOM was up until now doing the same. Recording faces and voices, tagging us, and now they can freely scan anything and everything (think Clearview) and they have the extras (voiceprint, 3d face recognition). Edit: I "felt" like ZOOM is 100% USA company. When I read (here) that the bulk is in China and USA has the shell/legal entity the above was my first thought. When I read some more that everything is routed via China and that their crypto is not actual crypto, I became certain that the Chinese Big Brother was doing that. I am not a conspiracy guy. I just see what China likes to do to its own people and now the out a camera in everyone's faces, "for free".
ausjke 6y ago
yes that's the problem, you use wechat, you're helping the CCP to censor. it's so sad all the other alternatives, facebook/Line/Telegram/etc are still lagging behind Wechat as a chatting tool, if there is one equally good, overseas wechat user might switch.

yingliu4203 6y ago

Many Chinese-Americans have no choice when they need to communicate with family and friend living in China. No outside communication tools allowed in China.

fiblye 6y ago
Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking. Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me. China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.
- xemdetia 6y ago
  Yes, it really is getting out of hand. If there was a reasonable equivalent that was an alternate (like an email address used to be), that would be one thing but even with a US phone all of a sudden your phone dies and you are completely stranded and even sites you used to be able to access are now no longer accessible because they are asking for phone numbers and confirmation of said numbers. It feels really awful.
  - lazylizard 6y ago
    Why not setup your own? Or use email? Stuff like deltachat works over smtp? Letschat is 1click deploy on heroku?
- seppin 6y ago
  > meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat. I've never heard it phrased this way before, dangerous indeed.
- devtul 6y ago
  We will give our freedoms away in name of preventing toxicity and hate speech. Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >Won't you feel good you are helping squash bigots by giving your PII away That doesn't enter the equation for what I would imagine is 99.99% of users. It's the erosion of privacy in the name of a) "Safety" and b) convenience The average person of the world has shown that they will trade virtually anything for the perception of convenience, or "safety". Look at the most recent gun ban in Canada for an obvious example; An act riddled with nonsense, already acknowledged to be completely ineffective at preventing gun crimes, pushed through by a minority government during a pandemic to the applause of a large part of the populace there in exchange for the false perception of "safety". The most frightening thing is just how effective it is.
idra 6y ago
"Have no choice" is false. Fortunately, email still works. As does any messenger through a VPN. Using Wechat is simply being complicit with censorship out of laziness.
- fiblye 6y ago
  Keep in mind that most major domains outside of China are blocked. Chinese services aren't going to be any more lax with surveillance than WeChat and have the same registration requirements. You could maybe try registering your own server, but do you want to have the possibility of questionable messages being saved on a server that you own when dealing with Chinese authorities? Any "oops, sorry" goes out the window when they think you're actively dodging filtering to that extent.
  - idra 6y ago
    The parent is talking about communicating with friends and family. My point is not about evading surveillance, it's about not using one of the main tools of the CCP censorship apparatus. If you're inside China and care about your safety, you would think twice about sending "questionable" messages even on the most secure channel because you're still physically vulnerable to rubber hose cryptanalysis.
    - fiblye 6y ago
      And I didn't say anything about sending anything. If anybody messages you or your family/friends receives something suspicious something and the Party suspects you're intentionally avoiding their watchful eye with a custom mail server, I think you might end up worse off. All it takes is one goofball finding a vulnerability in your system and dropping a joke image or bit of text to royally screw you. Furthermore, while it's nice in theory to deploy your own servers and get all of your friends and family to exclusively chat through your homemade application, it's very unlikely. WeChat is basically an OS all its own these days. It's a social network, chat app, payment app, shop, and more. People are incredibly reluctant to give up convenience unless they're very motivated and technologically inclined. And for people inside of China, getting a VPN or non-Chinese messenger is quite difficult thanks to locked down app stores and most people communicating only through phones. I don't use Facebook and won't budge on that issue. My parents won't use anything that's not Facebook. If they won't take 10 seconds to register for anything else, then they certainly won't want to deal with anything I'd try to scrap together. The end result is that I make a VOIP call to their phone about once a month and they ask me to just give up and use Facebook at some point. It's probably a similar situation with most people wanting to leave XYZ terrible messenger.
kevinchen 6y ago
I don’t think this is true. iMessage works in China (they can’t block all of Apple)
- gaoryrt 6y ago
  But iMessage in China was supported by yunshangguizhou(https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5%B7%9E https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%91%E4%B8%8A%E8%B4%B5%E5...), a state-owned enterprise.

woutr_be 6y ago

I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.

88840-8855 6y ago
lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont. For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.
- woutr_be 6y ago
  You don't think censorship is a big deal? That's exactly the reason why their government gets away with it, because people see it as no big deal.
  - balola 6y ago
    If what the gov is doing (ostensibly) makes them rich, e.g. they can afford cars and condo prices double every few years, them yes, the majority of people doesn't care.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      You can have those things without the oppression. Correlation doesn't equal causation.
      - taneq 6y ago
        I don't think anyone's saying oppression is necessary, merely that bread and circuses have always been enough to placate the masses. Nobody revolts on a full stomach.

stevespang 6y ago

Can't wait for Elon Musk's Starlink constellation over all of China. Next will be stealth missions to drone in Starlink internet boxes "transceivers" to as many citizens as possible. Will getting caught with one result in the death penalty ?

HenryBemis 6y ago

I feel/fear that we will learn (in 10-20 years from now) that ZOOM was up until now doing the same. Recording faces and voices, tagging us, and now they can freely scan anything and everything (think Clearview) and they have the extras (voiceprint, 3d face recognition). Edit: I "felt" like ZOOM is 100% USA company. When I read (here) that the bulk is in China and USA has the shell/legal entity the above was my first thought. When I read some more that everything is routed via China and that their crypto is not actual crypto, I became certain that the Chinese Big Brother was doing that. I am not a conspiracy guy. I just see what China likes to do to its own people and now the out a camera in everyone's faces, "for free".

ausjke 6y ago

yes that's the problem, you use wechat, you're helping the CCP to censor. it's so sad all the other alternatives, facebook/Line/Telegram/etc are still lagging behind Wechat as a chatting tool, if there is one equally good, overseas wechat user might switch.