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"WeChat censored our former Prime Minister" No, that's not accurate. Firstly, this doesn't clearly distinguish between WeChat and Weixin, which is sloppy. Secon

"WeChat censored our former Prime Minister" No, that's not accurate. Firstly, this doesn't clearly distinguish between WeChat and Weixin, which is sloppy. Second, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was 'on' Weixin, and did not own the account(!); foreign politicians are not eligible for official WeChat accounts. Morrison's Weixin account was registered under the name of a Chinese citizen known only as "Mr Ji" in January 2019, who appears to be, by all means, just some guy who later sold the account off. And yes, posts on that account were censored a few times. That entire story is an excuse to cover up the frankly bizarre way the former Prime Minister had his aides run his social media. It was actually handy for Scott because Australian media spun the entire thing as an elaborate censorship plot and part of his election platform was China fear. Meanwhile, this tweet thread (really 4 posts, it seems) is completely devoid of info on how WeChat/Weixin works, the payment system and how ubiquitous it is in China. Is it supposed to be a critique on a one-stop-shop pay/messaging/shopping platform? It barely touches on government censorship and there's no discussions on how government influences private companies. Very disappointing, given how integral the platform is to Chinese life.

ggm 4y ago
Had they wanted to empower Morrison to regain control of the account they could have. They decided instead to maximise benefit to the inter-state dispute by making him look like the twat he was. Yes, he got to spin china fear but he also alienated a lot of his chinese vote by his overall behaviour. I don't judge this one a win for his strategy/team. You seem to want a lot more than the tweet sequence provides. Maybe, thats a critique to put in-band? The topic is important, and interesting. Maybe there are better discussions. (the agency he works for, ASPI, is a very partisan player in defence/strategy discussions.)
- superchroma 4y ago
  Sure, that's fair. I'm interested in a deeper dive; I think there's a lot to be learned about and said about WeChat, and as a developer I am interested, myself. It seems like Facebook definitely wanted to be that sort of service at one point with Libra, and I wondered if Musk had his eyes on turning Twitter into a platform that was enriched in the same way.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Banning Trump exposed a lot of tension around politics, the state, private enterprise and FAANG which people don't want to discuss in the context of WeChat because.. whataboutism? I truly don't know. China is overt about state controls and we're kind of in denial. Important to remember US free speech laws don't actually apply to private spaces as much as the commons and if Twitter and Facebook are declared the commons in law.. a lot of things stem from that. And of course, by majority I suspect most twitter people are not US, although I may be wrong.
yorwba 4y ago
> this doesn't clearly distinguish between WeChat and Weixin, which is sloppy What is there to distinguish? Unlike the TikTok/Douyin split, WeChat and Weixin are the same app and there are no content silos separating Chinese users from the rest of the world.
- superchroma 4y ago
  As I understand, the user reach and censorship policy differs on both.
  - yorwba 4y ago
    Not in my experience. The only difference I've noticed with a European WeChat account is that I get occasional GDPR interstitials and no ads. But stuff that gets taken down gets taken down everywhere.

ggm 4y ago

Had they wanted to empower Morrison to regain control of the account they could have. They decided instead to maximise benefit to the inter-state dispute by making him look like the twat he was. Yes, he got to spin china fear but he also alienated a lot of his chinese vote by his overall behaviour. I don't judge this one a win for his strategy/team. You seem to want a lot more than the tweet sequence provides. Maybe, thats a critique to put in-band? The topic is important, and interesting. Maybe there are better discussions. (the agency he works for, ASPI, is a very partisan player in defence/strategy discussions.)

superchroma 4y ago
Sure, that's fair. I'm interested in a deeper dive; I think there's a lot to be learned about and said about WeChat, and as a developer I am interested, myself. It seems like Facebook definitely wanted to be that sort of service at one point with Libra, and I wondered if Musk had his eyes on turning Twitter into a platform that was enriched in the same way.
- ggm 4y ago
  Banning Trump exposed a lot of tension around politics, the state, private enterprise and FAANG which people don't want to discuss in the context of WeChat because.. whataboutism? I truly don't know. China is overt about state controls and we're kind of in denial. Important to remember US free speech laws don't actually apply to private spaces as much as the commons and if Twitter and Facebook are declared the commons in law.. a lot of things stem from that. And of course, by majority I suspect most twitter people are not US, although I may be wrong.

yorwba 4y ago

> this doesn't clearly distinguish between WeChat and Weixin, which is sloppy What is there to distinguish? Unlike the TikTok/Douyin split, WeChat and Weixin are the same app and there are no content silos separating Chinese users from the rest of the world.

superchroma 4y ago
As I understand, the user reach and censorship policy differs on both.
- yorwba 4y ago
  Not in my experience. The only difference I've noticed with a European WeChat account is that I get occasional GDPR interstitials and no ads. But stuff that gets taken down gets taken down everywhere.