WeChat’s world • Hacker News Board

Re: WeChat’s world

#81

Post by oldmanjay » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

delegate wrote: post #26

joosters wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't use it? I'm not sure how your comments reflect on WeChat; it's not like stores are insisting on you paying through the app, or that businesses are forcing you to use WeChat to contact them. It's an added convenience, and it seems people like that.

I generally try to avoid these services, but it's impossible to not use some of them, because of their monopolistic position. I have to use Facebook sometimes because people use it to organise events, concerts and other things which are now inaccessible to me unless I use Facebook. Which is terrible. These services are bad because they are popular and successful and because they try to offer more and more services on…

Your point doesn't really make any logical sense. It requires an intense envy for experiencing "everything" that simply isn't universal.

That your emotional reasoning leads you to believe that people are being controlled by social networks doesn't make your point any stronger, either.

Re: WeChat’s world

#82

Post by jordache » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

I love how WeChat allows for sending of large video files. I haven't come across a US based chat service that allows for this.

Re: WeChat’s world

#83

Post by BoorishBears » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #80

BoorishBears wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a thought experiment, imagine a bird cage that gets larger as a bird approaches its sides. Even if you put a bird that migrates in this cage, eventually the cage would reach some max size where cage size > maximum flight range of the bird. If the cage is so large that the bird doesn't try to escape it, does the bird care that it's in a cage? Is there really a difference between the cage and freedom? You can't get…

> does the bird care that it's in a cage? Yes. Because the bird ultimately has no control over the cage, cannot be assured of the motives of those who do, and knows its true freedom is always subject to the whims of the same.

But again, the average consumer isn't that concerned with those issues, because unlike this imaginary bird, the consumers could leave the cage anytime they wanted in theory. They've accepted a trade of control and privacy, for ease and convenience, and I don't know that it's not a choice they shouldn't make until someone can find a way to balance the two.

Re: WeChat’s world

#84

Post by Trufa » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #72

nullnilvoid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the bugs you found during the weeks? I have used it years and have yet found any bug.

It was 2 years ago, so I don't really recall most of the bugs. I do remember struggling mightily when I somehow lost access to my account. Restoring access required opening a janky web view with a form that wouldn't load properly on my iPhone so I had to borrow a friend's Android phone to try. Then the form was entirely in Chinese with no internationalization/translation available.

Oh, coincidentally, I've just had to do that, and it's true it is still a little bit "janky" since it's a webview and the process is a weird, but it was perfectly doable, it was also internationalized,

Not saying the app is perfect though, I'm sure it has lot's of bugs, and to be honest I definitely haven't used it fully, since I just use it for this one contact and mainly just talk, I was specifically talking about having good stable conversation for hours.

Re: WeChat’s world

#85

Post by nayuki » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

WeChat's features (text, photo post, video post, live phone and video) mostly work correctly for me, but a number of things frustrate me about it:

- Photo zooming and scrolling is broken

- Large photos and videos don't load half the time, and the retry mechanism is unclear (but eventually works given enough patience)

- Arbitrary limits like 9 photos per post in moments

- Really bad for writing and reading paragraphs of text

- I use Facebook as my primary social media, and the difference is stark. On a big desktop monitor, I can scroll through a hundred posts and comment on a few per minute. WeChat is mobile-only, and reading and writing is painful compared to PC.

- You can't log into WeChat on multiple devices simultaneously. Logging in will kick out the other device. Only the active device will receive and save current messages. And if you switch back and forth, you will fragment your message history across devices. This is unlike services like Facebook Messenger where messages are saved on the server and multiple logins are supported.

- Properly transferring message history from one device to another is painful. I did it on ~3000 messages plus ~300 MB of attached photos, and it took 10 minutes of transferring over Wi-Fi plus another few minutes just to digest/re-index all the messages on the new device.

- It forcefully uses your cell phone number as your identity, rather than a separate user name

Re: WeChat’s world

#86

Post by jjcc » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

A couple of hidden features a lot of people ignore are: 1. iBeacon 2. AirKiss and AirSync protocal for hardware connection.

To me, the 2nd function is a next big thing beyond social media. It seems not very significant now but will have a big impact in future.

Re: WeChat’s world

#87

Post by ParadoxOryx » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

jordache wrote: post #82

I love how WeChat allows for sending of large video files. I haven't come across a US based chat service that allows for this.

I hate to be the Telegram shill, but Telegram supports sending an unlimited amount of any type of file up to 1.5GB in size each.

https://telegram.org/blog/shared-files

Re: WeChat’s world

#88

Post by kccqzy » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

I haven't really seen anyone doing a decent security audit for WeChat though. Last time (2014) I tried digging into their third party API, I was put off by uses of MD5 as the preferred hash function. Does anyone know they have improved on the security front in the intervening two years?

Re: WeChat’s world

#89

Post by wmf » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

pipio21 wrote: post #43

"Among all its services, it is perhaps its promise of a cashless economy, a recurring dream of the internet age..." I will correct that a cashless economy is a recurring dream of central bankers and their more fervent supporters, like "The economist" or Keynesians or whatever. I prefer the old model in which companies compete against each other instead of having a panopticon company that knows all your private conver…

To be fair, central-bank-hating cryptocurrency enthusiasts also dream of a cashless economy. It sounds like you're kind of projecting.

Re: WeChat’s world

#90

Post by profeta » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 10:57 PM UTC

elorant wrote: post #46

delegate wrote: post #3

.. which is terrible. Apps like these (including Facebook) are breaking the Internet. Now it's up to the social network to decide how resources are located (what standards?), who can access them, and for how long, etc. Saw a good video in your Facebook timeline ? Good luck finding it again after you refresh the page. It's a pity how 'the crowd' is now dictating the direction in which technology evolves. By trying to…

As much as I dislike Facebook saying that they break the Internet is a bit of an overstretch. The Internet isn’t a static thing, a set of rules carved on stone that has to remain like that for an eternity. It’s an evolving medium constantly reinventing itself. And the ultimate ruler is users themselves. Facebook isn’t in the business of creating content that’s why they don’t care that much with discoverability of pos…

you probably defended Bell's monopoly in the past? If not, you are being very inconsistent now.