Re:WeChat and the Surveillance State
by rahimnathwani on Saturday June 08, 2019 @09:14PM
(#20136328)
From what you've written, it sounds like:
- you are comfortable writing code
- you want to interact with WeChat friends on >2 devices (not just phone+web, phone+desktop or phone+tablet)
- you would like a synchronised history of your WeChat interactions
You could probably build something close (but not the same) as what you need using https://github.com/Chatie/wechaty
It's made for writing bots, but you could use it to write a gateway. And have each of your devices communicate via that gateway.
Thanks, I heard about this library from someone else too! I should probably carve out some time to try to actually do this.
Its only benefit is its ubiquity, showing the strength of the network effect and the herd mentality of humans. I totally agree that it's a step backwards if your goal is actual communication of information. Even forum boards were better.
But that aside it's less about it being app. It's more that:
- It's a walled garden that is difficult to build plugins upon. About 10 years ago with QQ/ICQ/AIM/MSN/Gtalk/Zephyr I had written plugins for end-to-end encryption, auto rendering of LaTeX equations, remote control of IoT devices, gateways between platforms so a QQ friend could be in a group with an MSN friend, with me as the gateway, automatic translation, and lots of other features. WeChat is feature-wise a HUGE HUGE HUGE step back for me from what I had built for myself back then.
- It only supports signing on from a single device at a time. I never have a consistent device with me, and change devices multiple times over the course of a day. Facebook messenger and E-mail work extremely well if switch devices frequently, and keep all conversation logs on the server so it's easy to continue conversations in another location without carrying a phone around. My only solution with WeChat is to have multiple accounts, one per device, and pull each friend into a group with all of my other accounts. This emulates the functionality of Facebook messenger.
- Too much spying. It constantly scans my Wi-Fi networks, sensor data, installed applications, IMU/GPS, and lots of other things. I run it on a 2nd phone that has LineageOS on paranoid privacy settings and spit back fake sensor data when it tries to do those things. I don't have anything to hide, but they shouldn't be doing that stuff. Also, if you don't give WeChat permissions to certain things, it won't let you login, period. Much different from, say, Facebook, which will let you login but will just be crippled in the features you didn't give it appropriate permissions for.
- The UX downright sucks. You can't group friends or categorize groups, which means your screen is a mess once you join a bunch of groups. You can pin friends to the top, but once you pin enough friends, the chatrooms get pushed down so you can't see them anymore. People use WeChat to organize events via groups, yet it has no event-related features. The result is that you have to swipe through pages after pages of chitchat just to find the time and location, and screen through the chitchat to look for changes in the time and location from what was originally said. It's a horribly inefficient way to organize events. Just one of many problems.