WeChat and the Surveillance State • Hacker News Board

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#201

Post by dheera » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:32 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #163

dheera wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to say, but hard to do when the people who you genuinely value your relationship with don't use anything else. It's also not intended for "chitchatting about nothing of lasting consequence". It's specifically intended to basically be your entire life. In China you can pay all your bills, manage your bank account, buy plane, train tickets, hotel reservations, donate to charities, rent bikes, shop online, order fo…

> Easy to say, but hard to do when the people who you genuinely value your relationship with don't use anything else. Honestly most of my friends talk and organize on Facebook. I deleted mine. Things haven't really changed much. I just get texts when something is happening. Your friends are still your friends without whatever technology facilitates your social sphere. My experience, and many others that I know, is th…

> Your friends will still be your friends.

While this is true, you still do need to be able to contact them in today's isolated world where we don't run into our friends on a daily basis in public venues. For a vast amount of my friends, WeChat is effectively the only means of communication to organize an in-person meetup. For a certain group of people, it has replaced phones, e-mail, Facebook, and everything else.

Last time I was in the emergency room and needed a friend to bring over something to me? I sent them a message on WeChat from my hospital bed. I didn't have any other means to reach this particular trusted friend. They don't use Facebook, Signal, Telegram, or anything else, they don't check their e-mail frequently, and I don't have their phone number because the only thing we have ever used to make calls is WeChat voice call.

I have other groups of friends who organize real life events (hiking, dinner, etc.) on WeChat. Without WeChat I'd probably be left out of those. Yes, friends will still be friends, but they won't go out of their way to ping you by e-mail for a random hike that everyone else they know would just respond on WeChat for.

I just don't hate WeChat enough to want to completely ban it from my life. The friction of finding alternate communication methods with all the people I'm already friends with is too much to bother; I just grudgingly use WeChat.

Separately, I'm in China from time to time, have both lots of friends and business contacts there, so it's basically 100% a necessity for keeping in touch.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#202

Post by theseadroid » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #196

theseadroid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a third option aside from continue the state quo or convert fully into a democracy? Maybe the party can evolve into something that's more and more benevolent to the people it governs? As a Chinese who emigrated because of the many social problems of China, I'm not sure switching to democracy right now will be beneficial for regular Chinese. You've all heard stories about how bad mannered Chinese tourist…

I sense from your post that you confuse democracy with capitalism. Also Brazil and Russia are not democratic (right now). Neither have a democratically elected leader.

oh so the current presidents of Brazil is not democratically elected you mean[1]?

And how would you assure a democratic China will not have a corrupted election scheme that resemble Russia's?

Without you stating any evidence, I dare to say your sense is wrong. Chinese are more than ready for capitalism if the current system is not already it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Brazilian_general_electio...

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#203

Post by tanilama » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:41 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #70

I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article, but many other technical reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my friends and my entire social life happens on it. And I live in the Bay Area. If I don't use it I would basically be locking myself up in a prison where I would never see my friends. Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to orga…

Why the hate. It is just a chatting tool, nothing more. Most of the functionality is useless in US.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#204

Post by dheera » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:43 AM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #166

godelski wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy to say, but hard to do when the people who you genuinely value your relationship with don't use anything else. Honestly most of my friends talk and organize on Facebook. I deleted mine. Things haven't really changed much. I just get texts when something is happening. Your friends are still your friends without whatever technology facilitates your social sphere. My experience, and many others that I know, is th…

I think this is a case of you don't know what you're missing. That's not a bad thing, but it doesn't mean you're not missing anything.

100% correct.

I just happen to be on both FB and WeChat, because I have friends on both sides of the picture (English-/Chinese-speaking). I tend to have more social interaction with contacts on WeChat but many of them are conversely oblivious to the Facebook world. While they don't know about all your awesome house parties whose invitations appear only on Facebook, there are a whole slew of other awesome house parties happening on WeChat in the Chinese-speaking world of the Bay Area. Yesterday was the Duanwu festival, and my WeChat was flooded with people asking for who/where to buy dumplings from, others organizing parties to make them, yet others organizing camping trips, and you get the idea.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#205

Post by tanilama » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #175

komali2 wrote: post #38

I used to hold a kind of naive hope that the ham fisted Party would eventually be replaced with democracy. I remember back in 2011 my friends that were placed in moderately distinguished positions were sending their kids to Canada to collect foreign dual citizenship, fully expecting the collapse of the PRC in their lifetime. But now I think the Party is too good at maintaining itself. It's augmented by technology lik…

Maybe one day, if China embraces democracy, it might hope to become as prosperous as India. /s In all seriousness, "democracy" is at this point almost meaningless as a barometer of good governance. There are a lot of spectacularly successful autocracies and a lot of dismally awful democracies. In the broad scheme of things, the CPC has done a damned good job of advancing the interests of the Chinese people. China mig…

Agree. Democracy isn't the end of governance. A dysfunctional democracy is no better than an effective authoritarian government.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#206

Post by chairmanwow » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #171

dheera wrote: post #70

I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article, but many other technical reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my friends and my entire social life happens on it. And I live in the Bay Area. If I don't use it I would basically be locking myself up in a prison where I would never see my friends. Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to orga…

TBF. This is because you only hang out with asian people. I live in the bay too and I don't know many people using wechat :|

Asian ==> Chinese

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#207

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#208

Post by 0x1997 » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

Tiananmen Square, 1989 -- Revisited http://www.unz.com/article/tiananmen-square-1989-revisited/

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#209

Post by dheera » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 4:14 AM UTC

ex3ndr wrote: post #169

dheera wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to say, but hard to do when the people who you genuinely value your relationship with don't use anything else. It's also not intended for "chitchatting about nothing of lasting consequence". It's specifically intended to basically be your entire life. In China you can pay all your bills, manage your bank account, buy plane, train tickets, hotel reservations, donate to charities, rent bikes, shop online, order fo…

Sorry, but isn't every messengers try to load links to make fancy previews?

Yes, but not selectively based on keywords, and usually not with an MSIE user agent several hours after the message.

Re: WeChat and the Surveillance State

#210

Post by munmaek » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #171

dheera wrote: post #70

I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article, but many other technical reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my friends and my entire social life happens on it. And I live in the Bay Area. If I don't use it I would basically be locking myself up in a prison where I would never see my friends. Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to orga…

TBF. This is because you only hang out with asian people. I live in the bay too and I don't know many people using wechat :|

wechat is a chinese application. asian people != chinese.

I hang out with "asian people" all the time, but I use kakaotalk because I'm actually hanging out with Koreans. Or I use line with my Japanese friends.