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The terrible part of the WeChat's world is quite simple, it's a very private network piggybacked on the open internet. Even worse, unlike facebook, it's poorly moderated in the 'Chinese Way'. As for privacy/security concerns, WeChat is doing better than most of its counterparts in China, and let's just limit our scope in China. The domestic criticizes about WeChat is mainly in these aspects:
1. Using WeChat for Work, I have ZERO idea why people just did this, but even in my workplace, it's a common practice. It sounds unprofessional and risky to use an external tool for work purposes. 2. Lack of Openness, the only successful crawler works with WeChat is Sogou's search engine. Indexability is just the beginning of the issue. 3. Lazy moderation, rumor, pseudoscience, (domestic) copyright infringement articles are just everywhere and non-stoppable. WeChat officials said to put some force to stop these, but their 'official account hasn't been updated for ages. Maybe it's just what 'Chinternet' is like. 4. WeChat is a network of people you known in the 'outside world', friends/family/co-workers, this part just as bad as facebook. There's also an awesome part about WeChat, the payment. WeChat got into payment business not long ago in a traditional measurement of time. A few years later, can you imagine that you can buy vegetables with WeChat/AliPay? Back in my college days (2009), it was a Country where only some decent restaurants, chain markets accept debit/credit cards. WeChat is accepted everywhere now, only and offline. Speak of payments, there's one thing to add, you can check out how Alipay, a payment app, like PayPal are so much into communication business that flooded its app with all the SNS crap, even made friend suggestions based on who you had transactions with. I uninstalled the app immediately after they demonstrated their determination in the social network business, creepy. Not only WeChat is the only choice of social network on the go, but also it's a quite predictable software, more decent than most of its competitors. So I think this is more than just the "Convenience weighs more than risk mgmt" scenario, more likely something weighs more than 'Der Freiheit'. |