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WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

nautil.us

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Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#31

Post by adinobro »

jstanley wrote: post #27
adinobro wrote: post #17

A few things worth being aware of Alibaba does not own WeChat but rather's it's competition Alipay. It does not have any access to WeChat data. So far the "social credit" on seems to be mostly based on how much you buy and it only seems to give you discounts to massively overpriced products (similar to a credit card reward system). You don't really download apps in Wechat but rather add a link more like a Facebook Ap…

> You don't need to read since you can just send messages How can illiterate people send messages?

There is a button that you hold down and it sends a voice message (up to 60 seconds). They generally just send voice messages back and forth.

There is also a + for extra features like: * Sending a photo * Sending a short video * Calling * Money * Location

You don't need to be able to read to use any of them.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#32

Post by mstaoru »

jcbrand wrote: post #23
sergiomattei wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... What? It's the reason Starbucks exists. People are on the go, and they don't want to make their own coffee. This is literally the same as going to the corner coffee shop to buy a Frappuccino.

Going to Starbucks is not the same as having coffee delivered to your home, especially not if you walk there.

In China everything is delivered by electric scooters, delivery people get paid for it, more coffee shops can survive because otherwise they would have to provide more space which is very expensive, and most coffee is delivered in a paper bag with a paper cup stand.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#33

Post by rtpg »

adinobro wrote: post #26
test1235 wrote: post #21

How is the Chinese government with regards to IT quality? I've come to believe that most governments are inept when it comes to the management, security and general quality of their software. With the government holding so much critical information, it seems a very obvious and valuable target for hackers.

WeChat is a private company owned by Tencent.

I mean.... the govt can check whatever they want on the WeChat logs. And the populace is pretty accepting of this for security reasons (if you aren’t going off the “government can be corrupt and abuse it’s powers” principle its actually kinda hard to make the privacy argument!)

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#34

Post by wener »

adinobro wrote: post #26
test1235 wrote: post #21

How is the Chinese government with regards to IT quality? I've come to believe that most governments are inept when it comes to the management, security and general quality of their software. With the government holding so much critical information, it seems a very obvious and valuable target for hackers.

WeChat is a private company owned by Tencent.

Tencent is gov friendly company. Basically, data owned by gov.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#35

Post by rtpg »

spectramax wrote: post #7
catherd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash still works exactly the way it always has, (almost) nobody is going to turn down your business because you don't pay by an app.

Besides payments, WeChat is inextricably tied to everything you do in China from chatting with your friends to buying a movie ticket to visa renewals. I've spent over 400 nights in Chinese cities and I depend on WeChat like I depend on water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat#Features

I mean wechat is useful for talking to Airbnb hosts, but so long as you don’t have just 100s you can still pay people with cash

Also visa renewals? What is that in reference to?

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#37

Post by whoevercares »

As usual, as long as it does “greater good”, average Chinese people don’t really care about any “residual” moral/privacy related issue(given the average education level, most of them couldn’t even do a useful critical thinking of those topic)

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#38

Post by ggg2 »

loceng wrote: post #12
spectramax wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides payments, WeChat is inextricably tied to everything you do in China from chatting with your friends to buying a movie ticket to visa renewals. I've spent over 400 nights in Chinese cities and I depend on WeChat like I depend on water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat#Features

And how long, if not already - likely once their people are acclimatized to the idea of 'social rating' system - before they start subtly or aggressively warning people, swaying their behaviour, of potential for their rating to go down if associating with X who isn't using apps. A digitized version of Nazi Germany with mass censorship capabilities really is terrifying.

they already have the little red book-esque app that solidifies Xi as their permanent leader.

now I can't recall if that was a stand alone app or within the wechat ecosystem.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#39

Post by dewey »

_sveq wrote: post #2

I go to China often but it's been two years now. I don't look forward to the next visit for this very reason—I'll need this to pay for any and everything. I'm not going back.

I was there last month and it was almost impossible to get money on your WeChat account without a Chinese bank account. It was easy to fund my Malaysian WeChat account but the balance isn't transferable or usable in China.

There's currently one remaining loop hole I know about which is to pay someone to send money via a red envelope / hóngbāo but it's getting increasingly harder. It's already asking you for a passport and right now it still works even if you cancel that but probably not for much longer. You can do that either if you know someone, ask someone in a store if they do it from their personal account or through some websites that take PayPal but with a hefty commission usually.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#40

Post by n1000 »

Going to China soon and everybody tells me WeChat will help me a lot over there. However, I cannot create my account without a "voiceprint". It wants me to read some numbers to fingerprint my voice. Apparently I cannot skip this step and I am not very comfortable with that.
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