[shalmanese]

Nowadays, it's literally impossible to live in China without either WeChat or Alipay as health codes are integrated into the apps and it can be impossible to move outside without displaying your health code. Travelling on trains, planes and long haul busses now require you to have the app.

I don't think enough has been made about how extraordinary it is that a sovereign government has let such a core governmental function simply be handed over to for-profit businesses. It would be like, in the US, registering for your drivers license by Signing in with Google and being bound by the Google TOS. Commit an offense that causes Google to delete your account and now you can't legally drive anymore.

[system16]

It doesn't seem that extraordinary if in this scenario Google became an appendage of the federal government, providing it complete and unfettered access to its systems, complied to any and all requests without question, there was never concern for overreach or public backlash, etc.

[shalmanese]

People outside of China have wildly unrealistic ideas about the true relationship between large Chinese tech companies and the government.

https://www.ft.com/content/760142e6-740e-11ea-95fe-fcd274e92... is sadly paywalled but it's an excellent account of the actual negotiations that have been going on between Tencent, Alibaba and the many different bureaucratic layers of the Chinese government.

[freetrial]

Does anyone actually believe these long-winded articles that attempt to paint some sort of contentious, arms-length relationship between the CCP and their state-funded tech companies?

Obviously, the relationship is messy. But it's undoubtedly basic cronyism, and these companies succeed because they are the 'chosen ones' and their direct ties to government officials.

[tehlike]

http://archive.is/ApUOz

[rstuart4133]

So I gather in China you pay for retail purchases WeChat or Alipay and they are privately owned? It's not very different in Australia. We have Visa and Mastercard, both privately owned.

In Australia, the old rule "everyone must accept cash" has been swept away by covid-19. They've even upped limit you have at which you have to enter a PIN, so most purchases are contactless. Cash will be another casualty of covid-19 I guess. There are only two contactless platforms accepted everywhere - Visa and Master. Both are privately held. And they are head quartered in another country.

Is the USA so different?

[blackrock]

I recall, this actually happened a few months ago, but with Uber.

What happened, was Uber started dropping customers that had a poor rating. Maybe they didn’t give a $5 tip, so the driver gave them a poor rating. Who knows why.

But the result is that the public, the customer in question, can no longer use Uber’s services.

This is terrifying, in that Uber wanted to eliminate public taxi services, and privatize it on their proprietary platform.

If you think this through, then what could be the potential long term effect of this?

Possibly that we as consumers, are now beholden to some random rating system, by some private company, that has the final authority to withhold essential public services from us.

And from what we have seen, these private businesses have an effective lobbying system, that can get lawmakers to draft laws in their favor.

[whytai]

A few points. Uber drivers cannot see if individual riders have tipped them. They also cannot see your individual rating of them, nor you of theirs.

Policing their own platform works both ways. When I order an uber I expect a certain quality of service. ie a safe, comfortable ride. Likewise, when I drive for uber I expect people to respect my property (my car). I expect uber to fulfill both of these things so that it is a usable platform.

Beyond that, if you get removed from using uber can't you use lyft, didi, a taxi, or public transit?

I would hope that the long term effect of this is that people behave in ubers. I personally have had friends throw up in them or drunkenly harass female drivers.

[aianus]

> Uber drivers cannot see if individual riders have tipped them.

This is not true, I can see exactly which rides included a tip. However, I can't see this before I rate the rider so I can't penalize a rider for not tipping.

[shakethemonkey]

How is this different from a taxi company? A taxi company can and will blacklist your address. In fact, it may blacklist entire neighborhoods. This happens today.

[yumraj]

the for profit business has deep relationship with the government and is perhaps like its virtual arm, and it benefits the government by providing deeper access to people's activities.

[shalmanese]

A better way of describing this is, imagine that for the $1200 stimulus checks the US is sending out, the only way to receive that money would be to install a web app where your only choices are Sign in with Google or Sign in with Facebook. Once signed in, Google/Facebook would use their proprietary big data algorithms to determine if you are eligible for stimulus and, if you are, they would deposit it directly into your account via Google Pay/Facebook Pay.

If they reject you and you believe it's in error, the only way to clear up that error is to talk to a Google/Facebook employee, there's no way to directly talk to the US government.

On the one hand, it fixes one of the problems with the stimulus which is that it's not getting money into the hands of people fast enough. A Google/FB run system could have probably gotten the money into people's hands in days rather than the months it's taking the US govt. On the other hand, it's a totally wild scenario. There's no way it would even be thinkable that that's what the US government would roll out.

But that's the reality in China right now. For example, the law in Beijing right now is that you cannot check yourself into a hotel without showing a green Beijing Health Code and you can't get a health code without installing WeChat/Alipay. That's how crazy the situation is in China. Totally core government functions are being outsourced to for profit, private companies.