7 ms·

Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the

Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the government and forced on people. I see no way of twittex pulling this off.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
He wants the power, veiled as tech innovation, as you mention by cribbing off of an authoritarian regime. Someone should let the CFPB know. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 (CFPB data broker citations)
xNeil 3y ago
WeChat isn't forced on the people by the CCP by any means.
- account-5 3y ago
  Is it easy to live without it? Can you go about your business without it?
  - Conlectus 3y ago
    Those are separate questions. Is Google forced on people by the US Govt?
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      Does the US Government use services with Google accounts to conduct official business? You can fill out official government documents in WeChat.
      - xNeil 3y ago
        You can fill out official government documents in WeChat is entirely different from the government endorsing it. The US government can use AWS without endorsing everyone buy from Amazon.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Is this because the CCP pushed it or because adoption is so wide and got there organically?
    - lost_tourist 3y ago
      I think it can be both. The app becomes very popular, CCP analyzes it, sees that it is a very useful tool for surveillance, so they encourage it and promote its spread and give its execs special status.
  - netsharc 3y ago
    It's just "who doesn't have WeChat?" mindset and laziness to offer a different method of payment that makes it not easy to live without it. I was in China in Sept 2019 (what good timing..) and without WeChat I did feel if people thought I was from some remote remote village. I saw an old lady who had a rickety old cart with coals and a big pot, inside the pot were warm corn she was selling, and on the cart was a QR code to pay her with WeChat/AliPay.
    - lost_tourist 3y ago
      The CCP rules as much through soft power as through hard power (threat of being disappeared/jailed), WeChat is just another tool in their tool box. I don't think they are twisty mustache cartoon villains, but the CCP definitely are belligerent to anyone feeling personal liberty from the government beyond what they allow, and knowing you are always being watched is part of that.
      - netsharc 3y ago
        I think the topic of conversation was how some businesses don't offer payment options beyond WeChat/AliPay.. maybe the CCP talked to these businesses? But it seems the more logical answer is the businesses thinking "Who the hell doesn't have WeChat?"
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  Try living in any major Chinese city without it. On top of that, pretty much every foreign competitor is functionally disabled. Virtually all mobile payments in China are handled by WeChat/Tencent. That's not an accident.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Is it a big deal if foreign competitors aren't active in that market? I wouldn't expect a Chinese payment app to work with my US bank account any more than I would expect Huawei network equipment to be used to transmit domestic traffic.
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      The CCP is notorious for boosting domestic ventures, and strangling any foreign attempt to compete. And while I would agree that keeping strategic industries under domestic control is a good thing, social media and mobile payments are arguably not part of those.
      - rchaud 3y ago
        There aren't any payment apps in the US from friendly countries either. I think payments are a strategic industry, or at least one where the public doesn't benefit from having a Visa or Paypal take a cut of everything. As publicly funded infrastructure like interbank transfers gain greater adoption, I can see European governments discouraging use of American processors (Visa, MC) unless absolutely necessary.
kevinventullo 3y ago
Facebook wanted to do this 8 years ago. There are many, many reasons this is difficult, but for starters neither Twitter nor Facebook control a meaningful hardware platform. Apple/Google get a little closer with some of their payment stuff, but I’m skeptical they will ever displace credit cards.
croes 3y ago
People like Musk love dictatorships
- misiti3780 3y ago
  You're basing this on what exactly ?
  - croes 3y ago
    Because they have little or no problem working with dictatorial governments. This was also the case with countries in South America and Africa. And people like Musk alread behave like dictators.
    - misiti3780 3y ago
      Please provide a list of powerful people based in the US that own multinational companies that publicly do not work with dictatorial governments.
      - croes 3y ago
        Why should I provide counter examples of my statement? What do you think why companies went to China in the first place? Because of the great environmental and human rights?
        misiti3780 3y ago
        Tesla isnt the only company that went to China, why is this such a big concern - I bet you are using an iphone made in china.
        croes 3y ago
        First, you lost your bet. Second I could criticize Apples business in China even if I would use an iPhone. Third, I wrote people like Musk, that already says I don't mean Tesla only but all the companies that don't have a problem exploiting people in countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Russia etc. Just look how well VW played together with Pinochet in Chile.
misiti3780 3y ago
I agree, Im a big fan of everything he does but I see zero chance that X can become the everything app.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > Im a big fan of everything he does I really hope "everything" is an exaggeration.
  - misiti3780 3y ago
    you're back again ? space x + tesla
    - manuelabeledo 3y ago
      Back from where?
pengaru 3y ago
> Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat It's obviously Xitter, pronounced "shitter".
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  twix? bad for your health, and the whole left/right thing is a sham.
  - tchbnl 3y ago
    Tastes like garbage, though.
    - catchnear4321 3y ago
      and yet… some people can’t put the damn thing down. like they have a real problem. one might call it a disorder. an addiction.
  - ttepasse 3y ago
    Back in the 80s Twix was called Raider in Germany and, I believe all of continental Europe, up until the early 90s, when they decided to standardise on Twix Europe-wide. So they flooded the airwaves with this rhyming advertisement jingle: Raider heisst jetzt Twix, sonst ändert sich nix. (Raider is now known as Twix, nothing else changes.) Ever since the Twitter/X renaming my brain short circuits and I got this annoying jingle stuck in my head. Twix - harmful even 30 years later.
justrealist 3y ago
That is an extraordinarily unhelpful simplification of why WeChat is popular. It's popular because it's functional, has strong network effects, and people don't care about centralization or second-order effects. Now, in the US, we see it as the role of regulators to break up unfair monopolies, and even "fair" monopolies get a lot of scrutiny. In China, the gov doesn't really complain because they can piggyback on WeChat as a control mechanism. But the government is not why WeChat is popular. It's popular because it's good! in the immediate, effective sense. it works and people use it.
Arcanum-XIII 3y ago
It’s very much the view from cyberpunk histories where corpo are the true power, not government (behind that there are AI of course). So Musk is dreaming of a dystopia where he is one of the power.
tivert 3y ago
> Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the government and forced on people. I think you have some pretty serious misunderstandings. WeChat isn't popular in China because it's controlled by the government. IIRC, it's popular because it was better than other Chinese social apps. It's only controlled by the government to the extent that everything is controlled by them. It's only "forced" on people to the extent that Visa, the telephone, or Facebook is forced on Americans. In other words: WeChat can't be lazily though of as the Chinese equivalent of Telescreen from 1984, where everyone is forced to have and use one, even through it may function similarly in other ways.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

He wants the power, veiled as tech innovation, as you mention by cribbing off of an authoritarian regime. Someone should let the CFPB know. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 (CFPB data broker citations)

xNeil 3y ago

WeChat isn't forced on the people by the CCP by any means.

account-5 3y ago
Is it easy to live without it? Can you go about your business without it?
- Conlectus 3y ago
  Those are separate questions. Is Google forced on people by the US Govt?
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    Does the US Government use services with Google accounts to conduct official business? You can fill out official government documents in WeChat.
    - xNeil 3y ago
      You can fill out official government documents in WeChat is entirely different from the government endorsing it. The US government can use AWS without endorsing everyone buy from Amazon.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Is this because the CCP pushed it or because adoption is so wide and got there organically?
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    I think it can be both. The app becomes very popular, CCP analyzes it, sees that it is a very useful tool for surveillance, so they encourage it and promote its spread and give its execs special status.
- netsharc 3y ago
  It's just "who doesn't have WeChat?" mindset and laziness to offer a different method of payment that makes it not easy to live without it. I was in China in Sept 2019 (what good timing..) and without WeChat I did feel if people thought I was from some remote remote village. I saw an old lady who had a rickety old cart with coals and a big pot, inside the pot were warm corn she was selling, and on the cart was a QR code to pay her with WeChat/AliPay.
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    The CCP rules as much through soft power as through hard power (threat of being disappeared/jailed), WeChat is just another tool in their tool box. I don't think they are twisty mustache cartoon villains, but the CCP definitely are belligerent to anyone feeling personal liberty from the government beyond what they allow, and knowing you are always being watched is part of that.
    - netsharc 3y ago
      I think the topic of conversation was how some businesses don't offer payment options beyond WeChat/AliPay.. maybe the CCP talked to these businesses? But it seems the more logical answer is the businesses thinking "Who the hell doesn't have WeChat?"
manuelabeledo 3y ago
Try living in any major Chinese city without it. On top of that, pretty much every foreign competitor is functionally disabled. Virtually all mobile payments in China are handled by WeChat/Tencent. That's not an accident.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Is it a big deal if foreign competitors aren't active in that market? I wouldn't expect a Chinese payment app to work with my US bank account any more than I would expect Huawei network equipment to be used to transmit domestic traffic.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    The CCP is notorious for boosting domestic ventures, and strangling any foreign attempt to compete. And while I would agree that keeping strategic industries under domestic control is a good thing, social media and mobile payments are arguably not part of those.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      There aren't any payment apps in the US from friendly countries either. I think payments are a strategic industry, or at least one where the public doesn't benefit from having a Visa or Paypal take a cut of everything. As publicly funded infrastructure like interbank transfers gain greater adoption, I can see European governments discouraging use of American processors (Visa, MC) unless absolutely necessary.

kevinventullo 3y ago

Facebook wanted to do this 8 years ago. There are many, many reasons this is difficult, but for starters neither Twitter nor Facebook control a meaningful hardware platform. Apple/Google get a little closer with some of their payment stuff, but I’m skeptical they will ever displace credit cards.

croes 3y ago

People like Musk love dictatorships

misiti3780 3y ago
You're basing this on what exactly ?
- croes 3y ago
  Because they have little or no problem working with dictatorial governments. This was also the case with countries in South America and Africa. And people like Musk alread behave like dictators.
  - misiti3780 3y ago
    Please provide a list of powerful people based in the US that own multinational companies that publicly do not work with dictatorial governments.
    - croes 3y ago
      Why should I provide counter examples of my statement? What do you think why companies went to China in the first place? Because of the great environmental and human rights?
      - misiti3780 3y ago
        Tesla isnt the only company that went to China, why is this such a big concern - I bet you are using an iphone made in china.
        croes 3y ago
        First, you lost your bet. Second I could criticize Apples business in China even if I would use an iPhone. Third, I wrote people like Musk, that already says I don't mean Tesla only but all the companies that don't have a problem exploiting people in countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Russia etc. Just look how well VW played together with Pinochet in Chile.

misiti3780 3y ago

I agree, Im a big fan of everything he does but I see zero chance that X can become the everything app.

manuelabeledo 3y ago
> Im a big fan of everything he does I really hope "everything" is an exaggeration.
- misiti3780 3y ago
  you're back again ? space x + tesla
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    Back from where?

pengaru 3y ago

> Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat It's obviously Xitter, pronounced "shitter".

catchnear4321 3y ago
twix? bad for your health, and the whole left/right thing is a sham.
- tchbnl 3y ago
  Tastes like garbage, though.
  - catchnear4321 3y ago
    and yet… some people can’t put the damn thing down. like they have a real problem. one might call it a disorder. an addiction.
- ttepasse 3y ago
  Back in the 80s Twix was called Raider in Germany and, I believe all of continental Europe, up until the early 90s, when they decided to standardise on Twix Europe-wide. So they flooded the airwaves with this rhyming advertisement jingle: Raider heisst jetzt Twix, sonst ändert sich nix. (Raider is now known as Twix, nothing else changes.) Ever since the Twitter/X renaming my brain short circuits and I got this annoying jingle stuck in my head. Twix - harmful even 30 years later.

justrealist 3y ago

That is an extraordinarily unhelpful simplification of why WeChat is popular. It's popular because it's functional, has strong network effects, and people don't care about centralization or second-order effects. Now, in the US, we see it as the role of regulators to break up unfair monopolies, and even "fair" monopolies get a lot of scrutiny. In China, the gov doesn't really complain because they can piggyback on WeChat as a control mechanism. But the government is not why WeChat is popular. It's popular because it's good! in the immediate, effective sense. it works and people use it.

Arcanum-XIII 3y ago

It’s very much the view from cyberpunk histories where corpo are the true power, not government (behind that there are AI of course). So Musk is dreaming of a dystopia where he is one of the power.

tivert 3y ago

> Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the government and forced on people. I think you have some pretty serious misunderstandings. WeChat isn't popular in China because it's controlled by the government. IIRC, it's popular because it was better than other Chinese social apps. It's only controlled by the government to the extent that everything is controlled by them. It's only "forced" on people to the extent that Visa, the telephone, or Facebook is forced on Americans. In other words: WeChat can't be lazily though of as the Chinese equivalent of Telescreen from 1984, where everyone is forced to have and use one, even through it may function similarly in other ways.