WeChat’s world

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.

WeChat is an amazing App with a lot of features. Using it for payment is convenient. It's video Chat is so much better than Skype in terms of stability etc. (Consider the network condition in China that's certainly a miracle.)

But there is certainly something Orwellian in WeChat. WeChat has built-in browser, which they do some censorship on links people click on. I put in a link from cn.nytimes.com and I got this: http://i.imgur.com/jMGZZSH.png (I clicked this link in China and got that, my friend clicked that link in WeChat while being in U.S. and get through fine. magic) Please note this is not even the usual GFW business, GFW doesn't return something like that at all. The text in the pic says "it was reported by many people", my feeling is that any link from cn.nytimes.com would got that no matter whether people reported or not.

What is more, they do this to Taobao, the major Chinese online business website, held by their competitor Alibaba (they are competitor in the same sense Google, Apple and Facebook are competitors, not because of they are both in the same niche field), namely if you send a link from taobao.com (e.g. https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=531244443418), you end up seeing this: http://imgur.com/e3pHmUe.png where the text says "Please copy this link and paste it in the browser to visit." (On the other hand, WeChat has a "Shopping" entrance to taobao's competitor jd.com right within the App.) [The actual reason is complicated, Taobao blocked UserAgent:WeChat long time ago when WeChat is small, but now it's the other way around.]

Although I won't put it as 1984, I'd say it's more like "Brave New World". With WeChat one can do whatever he/she wants "as long as being a good citizen" (and not using WeChat's competitor's service too much). It could be turned into a 1984-world very easily -- e.g. You may noticed that I'm paranoid enough to cut the ISP information when showing the screenshot, but what if the background image contains information of my WeChat ID? After all it's only 4-5 bytes at most. (To those who think I'm overthinking, this is already happening to Alibaba's internal network to prevent information leak.)

That's why apps like Signal/Telegram always have a small user base in China, no matter how much better WeChat are compared to them.

Assuming that the rest of the world is wrong because it's moving in a direction you personally disagree with doesn't make you courageous or visionary, it makes you Principal Skinner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik

"HSBC, a bank" "BMW, a german car maker" "Goldman Sachs, an investment bank"

Which got me thinking... who is the audience for this article? Probably not the average Economist reader, who knows who HSBC, BMW and GS are. In fact they know that "GS" means Goldman Sachs in this kind of context.

It's also wildly pro-wechat, in a very boosterism way. For an editorial this would be fine, but this is pushed as news. It also cites businesses, not people, as various 'proof' points, and inconsistently uses informal and formal language in the same sentence. Most investment banks don't "reckon" about the rise of multibillion dollar firms.

As an introduction to nonfiction writing, I feel like this piece would struggle to get a C-, if not a F.

I have always understood the Economist to be a newspaper held to a different standard (self-imposed even). But this kind of stuff suggests that perhaps they are trying to infringe upon Forbes' territory.