[Trufa]

Has anyone criticizing it actually tried weChat?

I know that there are better ways to do things, and you don't have to accept the "Chinese way" of doing things, but that's mainly politics, and yes there ARE a lot of privacy concerns, but, and there's a big but.

Technically speaking, the app is amazing. I recently used it to talk to my girlfriend while she's in China and seriously, it's the best (face to face) communication app I have used. I'm not talking about any features in particular, though it does feel very stable. I'm talking about un-interrupted voice communication for hours and hours!

I've lived abroad for the last 4 years, so I use skype and Hangout and facebook call and whatsapp call and appear.in and any new hipster service that comes up a lot. The main thing they have in common is that I spend a quarter of the time saying "hello, hello, do you hear me?"

This is the best VOIP service I've ever tried, period. It just works.

My point does not address the privacy concerns and so on, but seriously, I really think that most people commenting here are implying that the app is necessarily crappy, reality isn't that simple. I'm seriously trying to get my friends to use it, I will not discuss very sensitive matters over it, but seriously, if you're really concerned about privacy, you probably shouldn't be using any of the big ones anyway.

[kev6168]

>> Technically speaking, the app is amazing.

This. Also, the app's user interface is super intuitive despite providing so many advanced functionalities (which are very stable and just works). I don't have stats or anything, just my own experience, and also watching others using it.

I personally know people who are in their late 60s, who previously only used mobile phones for making calls (not even texting, let alone web browsing), are happy active WeChat users. My aunt showed me recently her high school classmate group in WeChat and their enthusiastic planning (with text, images, short videos) of the first reunion since they graduated in the early 70s! It will be held in the old home town. Half of the people, including my aunt, are living in other parts of the country currently. She and I watched those videos and read some of the posts for about half an hour. We had a great time talking about the various WeChat features. It was a beautiful experience. I saw a concrete instance of technologies' positive impact on ordinary people's lives.

I am pretty sure their children have tried numerous times to get parents to use some mobile chatting apps in years. But WeChat is the first one I know that has succeeded in the senior demographic, largely due to its amazing UI.

[morgante]

I have in fact used WeChat (particularly when I was in China) and my opinion is that it's still incredibly mediocre.

In just a few weeks of using it, I ran into numerous bugs and inconsistencies—not to mention the fact that it's a giant walled garden with zero privacy.

Unfortunately, it is essential in China (primarily because alternatives are throttled/banned). I definitely would never use it anywhere else though if I had a choice.

[nullnilvoid]

Can you elaborate on the bugs you found during the weeks? I have used it years and have yet found any bug.

[morgante]

It was 2 years ago, so I don't really recall most of the bugs. I do remember struggling mightily when I somehow lost access to my account. Restoring access required opening a janky web view with a form that wouldn't load properly on my iPhone so I had to borrow a friend's Android phone to try. Then the form was entirely in Chinese with no internationalization/translation available.

[Trufa]

Oh, coincidentally, I've just had to do that, and it's true it is still a little bit "janky" since it's a webview and the process is a weird, but it was perfectly doable, it was also internationalized,

Not saying the app is perfect though, I'm sure it has lot's of bugs, and to be honest I definitely haven't used it fully, since I just use it for this one contact and mainly just talk, I was specifically talking about having good stable conversation for hours.

[nullnilvoid]

I suggest you give it another try. 2 years is a long time. At that time, English support was not good. It is much better now (I am using the English version). It is years ahead of WhatsApp, FB Messenger in terms of stability and features.

[idra]

Push notifications have been broken on iOS for over a year already. You don't receive them unless the WeChat is open in the background.

[sdm]

Huh? Push notification work just fine. I use WeChat daily on my iPhone and never had an issue with push notifications.

[fjabre]

I'm glad this is the top comment. I was in China recently and was amazed by how functional and well developed the WeChat app is.

I'm happy the Chinese government blocked Facebook, if only because it gave my intellect pause to think about what happens when Facebook isn't allowed to use its network effect to its advantage to snuff out any other fledgling social network that would challenge it. Maybe we should take a second look at network effect and the unfair monopolistic power it provides to companies like Facebook who don't really have to innovate because of their global dominance and established network effect.

[djfergus]

I would not be surprised if the great Chinese firewall does DPI and degrades the connections of all those western built technologies you mentioned. China has been accused of protecting its companies from competition under the guise of security/order/regulation especially in the communications space.

[Trufa]

I was not talking about using it communicating with China alone, I've used HO and Skype in a variety of countries, communicating with a variety of other countries, they seem to all suck for fluid uninterrupted communication that is basically the only feature I want.

[Zarel]

I'm Chinese and my relatives and friends use it, so I have.

I personally strongly dislike it because you have to set a phone as your primary device. And if you break your phone, all your message history is gone.

In theory it has a desktop client, but the desktop client sucks. It requires you to use your phone to scan a QR code (which is currently failing for me with an "Unable to find (3,-1)" error).

They only recently added the ability on the desktop client to save message history (before, it would be wiped every time you log in). Even now, I can't see messages received while my computer isn't connected to WeChat (e.g. when my computer is off).

In general, anything that makes me use a phone keyboard instead of a computer keyboard to talk to people is a no-go for me.

So yeah, I dislike it for reasons that have nothing to do with the privacy. It has "better" privacy than most apps since it doesn't do cloud message storage unless you tell it to, but I'd rather it did like Facebook or Hangouts or Skype.

[frik]

I have, and compared to WhatsApp or Facebook Chat, WeChat is like two years ahead.

Fly to China, and try it out and interact with other people in one of their tier 1 cities.

[hyh1048576]

I use WeChat daily and I left my response in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=12628827

TL;DR: It's more than a privacy concern, censorship is right built in there.

I agree there's a lot to learn from WeChat though.

[IAgreeBut]

WeChat has preferential QOS guarantees through the Great Firewall. Due to that alone, its miles and miles ahead of any other voice/video chat app. Even if the feature set sucked, it would be worth using simply because it works so much better than everything else. It works better than the phone, in my experience, for voice chat.

But using it between say two people in north, central, and/or south america? Eh. There's some neat things about it, but losing the big firewall advantage, or the local market advantages (payments integration, third party app ecosystem integration for things like didi or even silly social toys) its hard to see why I would use it over the other messengers.

[sdm]

> WeChat has preferential QOS guarantees through the Great Firewall. Due to that alone, its miles and miles ahead of any other voice/video chat app.

The thing is the OP is not talk just about going across the GFW. Even in Canada calling someone else in Canada, the quality is FAR above what you get with Skype.

[mynegation]

I am not criticizing it, but I am not using it either (I did use it, out of novelty and because of couple of friends of east Asian descent).

Ultimately, it is not about features or quality, but what the majority of your social network uses. Personally, I would dispense with all the messengers altogether. I usually ask people to e-mail me for the non-urgent stuff, call me for really urgent stuff, and for everything in between there is text and iMessage.