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WeChat's App Revolution

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Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#71

Post by Freak_NL »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #51

I will ask this again. Why is nobody here interested in building one app that does it all? Nobody wants to have 100 apps on their phones, or create 1000 online accounts. Such an app would easily make most tech companies obsolete. What part do people not understand?

People here are probably on the cautious side of centralising all of their online identities and activities into one app. Our privacy is under enough threat as it is.

Besides, I don't want to migrate everything I do online to a smartphone (it would have to be Android or IOS then, because that's all they support of course — vendor lock-in is not so great for innovation) or a sanctioned PC OS. In fact, most of the time I don't even want to run some service's software, except for those that run in the sandbox that is my web browser (i.e., websites and web applications).

Actually, all things considered we already have that one app that does it all; the web browser.

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#72

Post by Markoff »

robjan wrote: post #63
Markoff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no such thing as internet in China, correct word here for North Korea 2.0 is intranet, it's like calling something with 20% milk fat content butter

There is a difference between China and North Korea's internet access. North Korea works on a "whitelist" basis, whereas China operates on a "blacklist" basis. The Chinese people have access to the majority of the internet but, for cultural and language reasons, are not interested in most Western websites. Yes, many western social media and news sites are blocked but they are not "the internet" and if you consider th…

please, i was living in China more than 5 years, Chinese government won't let me to video chat with my family, every single app was blocked unless i wanted my family to install Chinese spyware on their devices, even the Skype which is supposed to be not blocked is essentially slowed down to speed marking it useless for video

pretty much every photo sharing website is blocked

Chinese "internet" is essentially using white list, it's easier to say what's not blocked than list everything which is blocked

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#73

Post by fornever »

Markoff wrote: post #60
simonh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is Chinese but has lived in the UK since 2001 and is a British citizen. In the early days she talked about us moving to China some day, but now feels much more at home here. She absolutely loves WeChat and uses it all the time. She uses it to keep in touch with old friends in China and new Chinese friends in the UK. It also keeps her connected to contemporary Chinese culture. So even outside China, WhatsApp's…

well if she doesn't mind reporting everything to Chinese government in that piece of spyware (you can't even launch it with blocked location permission) and have censored speech with deleted inappropriate Moments posts and PRIVATE communication, then it's nice app i guess

Maybe the US companies and government should have thought about that before making that behavior normal in the digital world.

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#74

Post by muse900 »

Markoff wrote: post #60
simonh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is Chinese but has lived in the UK since 2001 and is a British citizen. In the early days she talked about us moving to China some day, but now feels much more at home here. She absolutely loves WeChat and uses it all the time. She uses it to keep in touch with old friends in China and new Chinese friends in the UK. It also keeps her connected to contemporary Chinese culture. So even outside China, WhatsApp's…

well if she doesn't mind reporting everything to Chinese government in that piece of spyware (you can't even launch it with blocked location permission) and have censored speech with deleted inappropriate Moments posts and PRIVATE communication, then it's nice app i guess

Like if any app out there isn't reporting towards a government...

note: am not a WeChat advocate.

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#75

Post by nneonneo »

Markoff wrote: post #72
robjan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between China and North Korea's internet access. North Korea works on a "whitelist" basis, whereas China operates on a "blacklist" basis. The Chinese people have access to the majority of the internet but, for cultural and language reasons, are not interested in most Western websites. Yes, many western social media and news sites are blocked but they are not "the internet" and if you consider th…

please, i was living in China more than 5 years, Chinese government won't let me to video chat with my family, every single app was blocked unless i wanted my family to install Chinese spyware on their devices, even the Skype which is supposed to be not blocked is essentially slowed down to speed marking it useless for video pretty much every photo sharing website is blocked Chinese "internet" is essentially using wh…

FWIW, Apple FaceTime worked fine for me three years ago (video calling between China and the US).

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#76

Post by miguelrochefort »

Freak_NL wrote: post #71
miguelrochefort wrote: post #51

I will ask this again. Why is nobody here interested in building one app that does it all? Nobody wants to have 100 apps on their phones, or create 1000 online accounts. Such an app would easily make most tech companies obsolete. What part do people not understand?

People here are probably on the cautious side of centralising all of their online identities and activities into one app. Our privacy is under enough threat as it is. Besides, I don't want to migrate everything I do online to a smartphone (it would have to be Android or IOS then, because that's all they support of course — vendor lock-in is not so great for innovation) or a sanctioned PC OS. In fact, most of the time…

I think that privacy is unsustainable. I don't think we should strive to protect it. We should work toward enabling people to live fully transparent lives.

When I say "app", I mean all software including websites. The main problem to tackle is not a technical one, but a design one. It's with the UX fragmentation that I have a problem. A native mega-app that contains mini-apps with different UX is not better than what we have today.

The web browser is even worse than native apps, as there's not even a minimal set of guidelines that help unify the web experience.

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#77

Post by miguelrochefort »

gcb0 wrote: post #57
miguelrochefort wrote: post #51

I will ask this again. Why is nobody here interested in building one app that does it all? Nobody wants to have 100 apps on their phones, or create 1000 online accounts. Such an app would easily make most tech companies obsolete. What part do people not understand?

not sure if trolling or not... but good luck having your bank app developed by the same standards as the Facebook app protected by the same password.

I'm serious.

What's the problem?

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#78

Post by mcintyre1994 »

HappyTypist wrote: post #52
a_c wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your suggestion. I misunderstood the meaning of filter in the article. I was thinking about the realtime effect as in Mac's photo booth.

WebRTC

Is there a demo of Photo Booth in WebRTC? That'd be pretty cool!

Re: WeChat's App Revolution

#80

Post by arjo129 »

robjan wrote: post #63
Markoff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no such thing as internet in China, correct word here for North Korea 2.0 is intranet, it's like calling something with 20% milk fat content butter

There is a difference between China and North Korea's internet access. North Korea works on a "whitelist" basis, whereas China operates on a "blacklist" basis. The Chinese people have access to the majority of the internet but, for cultural and language reasons, are not interested in most Western websites. Yes, many western social media and news sites are blocked but they are not "the internet" and if you consider th…

Local sites are considerably faster than foreign sites which don't work if they use https.
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