Unfortunately, we are having similar problems here as well as our large tech/finance companies (social media, registrars, paypal, patreon, stripe, mastercard, etc ) are being used to silence voices and intimidate people.
Even more worrisome is the effect that money and investment from our largest foreign investors china, saudi arabia, israel, etc will have going forward. Will tech censor even more to appease large foreign investors? We know how foreign money and investment affects everything from hollywood to news coverage to politics. Can tech be immune from that?
There’s a lot more stick than carrot from the government to connecting outside, so a lot of people are just avoiding concequences rather than doing what they want. OTOH, we complain about the same problems in our “free/open” internet as well.
Network effects. Look into any thread here about people quitting FB. You'll see several valid use cases showing why people stay on the platform despite its serious flaws.
Living in Seattle, I haven’t been to an ATM in 6 months. The last time I had to use cash was ironically in Boston China town (a cheap Banh Mi place wouldn’t take credit cards).
I don’t know about Seattle, but in California most recreational cannabis stores don’t accept card so that was another couple of hundred dollars I had to withdraw and use this week.
Marijuana is unique because banks won’t go near it because the federal government still thinks weed is illegal. Marijuana dispensaries aren’t even allowed bank accounts as a result, something that would surely happen in China as well :).
My point was more that mobile payments are not ubiquitous yet, and enough places are cash only that you still have to think about carrying cash just in case. I only mention cash as an extreme, as opposed to China, where everywhere accepts mobile payments even like street food, which is funny given SF is a tech center.
The reason street food is not well developed in SF is that there simply isn’t much street food. If small store holders and credit card free food vans were more of a thing, well, they could use Square or something. A developed economy is basically just structured very differently from a developing one, where most consumer transactions occur between big businesses that have no problem using checks or CC or debit cards or ApplePay or whatever.
On the other hand, China never had checks and CCs never caught on, debit cards were eventually supported though in annoying ways (PIN AND sign, WTF???). CCs are even worse: in China, the burden of proof is in the consumer rather than the merchant, so Chinese CC holders are actively targeted abroad for fraud (eg restaurants in Bellevue WA targeting Chinese visitors with ICBC AmEx cards because they know ICBC is a shit bank). They skipped all that, and found QR codes and phones a great way to catch up. I think that is great, but they haven’t really surpassed the deceloped world l, they’ve just adapted well to their own situation.
Do those other options actually exist within China? I thought they were blocked and that's why WeChat is dominate.
I think you're talking about domain fronting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_fronting). IIRC, Google, Amazon, and MS all blocked it because they were afraid of getting blocked. Though I also vaguely recall that Russia was blocking big blocks of AWS IPs for a time to try to stamp out Telegram.
I was in China recently, and Signal actually seemed to work on a local wifi network (with cellular data disabled), so maybe they've got some new circumvention technology in place. I didn't thoroughly try to test it since 99% of the time I just used data roaming on a foreign carrier to avoid the firewall.
I have neither a WeChat or Facebook account. I just don't see any real usecase for me and never missed it. But people are using it because it is usefull for them, even thou i can't see why people arent just using the alternatives that arent a murdochesque cancer in democracy.
People just dont care about the poltical implications of the technology they are using. People often just want it to work, because usually it doesn't.
And WeChat is really good software. Its better than almost everything i have ever seen before. From my insight it is completely out of league for facebook. WeChat compares to facebook like Genera to CP/M. A glimpse at it gave that "the future is right now feeling" like nothing within the last 10 years.
people use it because: 1. If the conversation is not about criticizing gov in group chat or "moment" timeline, it's ok. Group chat/Timeline are not treated as public space, and talking bad in public is prohibited. 2. friends/family are on it and professional network is also on it. 3. store member cards are on it, you can order food and checkout in restaurants or online on it, you can send/receive money on it; using third party integrated services, you can book hotel, train, flight, pay utilities; you can even play games using the internal "tiny apps".
It brings so much good things, while you just need to keep silent about specific things. Privacy is still a relatively new concept to China, and the true freedom of speech is just so distant that the upper level doesn't seem to like it and you can't really oppose such overwhelming power. So why don't they just relax and use it.
That plus the language barrier also makes it a convenient way for WeChat users who immigrate to other countries to avoid integrating into overall society as well as discussing controversial matters like tax minimization strategies. I'd like to think my government has considered the latter and is doing something about it but I'm not too hopeful.
It seems incredible that people would want to use such a restrictive service when much more open ones exist, but the others routinely have their service degraded by the government so they aren't a viable option.
Personally, it think in the long term this sort of compartmentalization is harmful, it too often facilitates groupthink and missing valuable input from people with a different perspective. It's damaging to a society and is going to have repercussions.