Looking at the comments I think that most of commenters missed an important point. It's not just that the app is tracking users, but the messages sent by any non-Chinese user help the regime censor the content for Chinese users. In other words, if you use WeChat, and you send a photo of something that happened in Hong Kong along with some text that explains it, then you actually help Chinese authorities to censor this photo in China.
> Upon analysis, files deemed politically sensitive are used to invisibly train and build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system.
Also I think it's super cool how they did the research.
I use WeChat to talk to friends in China, (I live in HK) and I noticed that last year, especially when the protests were intense, many of my posts just didn't show up. These were mostly pictures unrelated to the protests. I had the sense that anything coming out of Hong Kong was just hidden by default.
lol, this is nothing new and nothing special. There are some words that just dont go through and messages dont arrive. I lived there and tried it with friends. You literally stand next to each other, some messages arrive, some dont.
For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.
Many Chinese-Americans have no choice when they need to communicate with family and friend living in China. No outside communication tools allowed in China.
Outside of China, we're pretty lucky that we can just register for random sites like HN with nothing more than a username and password and start talking.
Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat.
But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me.
China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.
"Have no choice" is false. Fortunately, email still works. As does any messenger through a VPN. Using Wechat is simply being complicit with censorship out of laziness.
I feel/fear that we will learn (in 10-20 years from now) that ZOOM was up until now doing the same. Recording faces and voices, tagging us, and now they can freely scan anything and everything (think Clearview) and they have the extras (voiceprint, 3d face recognition).
Edit: I "felt" like ZOOM is 100% USA company. When I read (here) that the bulk is in China and USA has the shell/legal entity the above was my first thought. When I read some more that everything is routed via China and that their crypto is not actual crypto, I became certain that the Chinese Big Brother was doing that. I am not a conspiracy guy. I just see what China likes to do to its own people and now the out a camera in everyone's faces, "for free".
yes that's the problem, you use wechat, you're helping the CCP to censor.
it's so sad all the other alternatives, facebook/Line/Telegram/etc are still lagging behind Wechat as a chatting tool, if there is one equally good, overseas wechat user might switch.
It’s worth noting that Facebook Messenger also intercepts and filters messages. For example, it’s impossible to send a message containing the link “joebiden.info”. On the mobile app, it will simply say “failed to send.” On desktop, it will tell you the link violates its “community standards” and cannot be shared.
I just tried it on Facebook Messenger, and it would only work when switching to a encrypted chat (which kind of makes sense).
Kind of outrageous to criticize WeChat and leave out Facebook, when it clearly wants to join the party. I realize Facebook doesn't implement the same degree of censorship as WeChat, but to be fair, I live in Japan, and even for me the joebiden.info is censored.
And even then, I remember trying to send a torrent magnet link to someone in an encrypted chat and it wouldn't go through. They're also doing some local / client-based filtering as well.
You must be new to FB blockings. Our company has a website ranked in the top ten most visited websites in our country, and FB just block the domain entirely from FB systems without any explanation. They only unban us recently.
This is the first time I've heard of this. Are there other links that Messenger blocks? Honestly I'm really curious what went into this decision, I can't really understand why they thought this was a good idea.
WhatsApp used to block links to competitors such as Telegram. It would mysteriously fail to send. I just tested it again and apparently, they now allow it.
No text is censored on WhatsApp, it's technically impossible due to E2EE. Obviously you can't send GB of data in one message, and there must some other small client-side restrictions, but nothing you can reasonably call censorship.
Facebook Messenger also used to check if you were sending an image uploaded by one of your friends. If Alice uploaded a photo, but didn't share it with Bob, you wouldn't be able to send that photo to Bob. It would also check if a shared photo was embedded in another, like a screenshot.
The differences are: (1) with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government; (2) Facebook at least tells you when a message can't be sent but WeChat fails silently.
> it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that
That's certainly not a universally agreed upon perspective. Just because you're a private company doesn't mean you can do anything you want (eg. discrimination), hence the existence of regulations.
It must be rather nice to feel so assured that this alleged separation of state and industry exists; as though the line between state and society, particularly industry, is all that clear.
A private company with a massive user base and global presence I should add. Which fights for complete market dominance in every way it can, buying every Platform they can, that has large adoption. It’s not only bound by the American constitution. It’s like saying Windows is not an almost de facto monopoly because “people have choices”.
"First Amendment" means nothing outside the US and certainly has nothing to do with WeChat. Why are people using esoteric and convoluted American terms for things that have universal equivalents?
> with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that
Whether the company is private or not is immaterial. What matters is its scale, and how much you can actually avoid it.
Facebook is not easily avoided. I personally went under significant social pressure to get an account and actually use it. Getting out had a measurable cost (not being aware of events that mattered to me). That's not too bad, but even then I'm cheating: my SO has an account, and I regularly profit from that.
Same for YouTube: they have a near monopoly on most western audiences. If they block something, that's near censorship. Next to it, most alternatives might as well not exist at all.
Mark Zuckerberg getting hauled in front of Congress could be viewed as not-so-subtle pressure. Even without explicitly requiring censorship, the government can pressure companies to enact it. At what point does that become a First Amendment issue?
it has been proven time and time again that companies and politicians have engaged in quid pro quo. this "oh, but companies are private in the u.s." is a bunch of bull. that's exactly what they want you to think, meanwhile, there are lot of shenanigans and lobbying that goes on in the background.
>with Facebook it's a private company doing the censoring and there's no issue with that, no First Amendment issues at all, unlike WeChat where the censoring is heavily linked to the government;
Why does this not apply to other situations such as who I hire?
Also, is not Facebook used by parts of the US government? If Facebook prevents me from sending that link to any government representative then does that not constitute the government (by choosing to use Facebook as a communication channel) censoring my speech? It would be similar to the case of Trump blocking individuals on Twitter. Imagine if government offices swapped to some religious based chat forum as their official means of communication where messages from all people not of a certain religion (as determined by the sight) are filtered.
Very very few messaging platforms operate without any kind of censorship. Censorship, by itself, is not particularly worrisome, especially when done by first or second parties to the conversation.
The problems arise when the censorship is compelled by third parties who are using it for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of others.
I'd argue that the problems arise whenever the censorship is compelled by third parties, even if they're doing it for the benefit of others.
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
>For example, it’s impossible to send a message containing the link “joebiden.info”
This is the first I've heard about this. Had a look at the site and the content loaded doesn't seem to be malicious (technically), just content on some questionable areas about Biden.
At the bottom it claims: "It is not paid for by any candidate, committee, organization, or PAC." While that may be technically true (it would be hard to verify), it's certainly misleading. I'm assuming because of that claim it runs afoul of FB's community standards.
Meh I can kind of understand why the site is deemed questionable. It's paid for by a Republican political consulting firm. It may not be orchestrated by the Trump campaign but they definitely condone it. According to Snopes some parts of it can also be deemed as misinformation (like the picture framed as Biden groping Stephanie Carter).
So to me it's in the grey area bordering on black, but I'm also not a fan of this type of campaigning (playing on the man).The fact that they try to present it as an actual Biden website is also questionable.
Are we really at the point where we can defend censorship of a website that doesn't have any illegal content, no links to illegal content, and the purpose of which is not to do anything illegal, but whose only purpose make ones political opinions known.
On Facebook messenger, one of the biggest messaging apps in the world. This is honestly disgusting, and I think they are going to face backlash for it.
They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.
Propaganda is propaganda. It does not surprise me and it is very obvious - even more obvious then the "USA SO HERO" and "WESTERN STUFF IS SO COOL" propaganda in movies.
The difference is there are plenty of US movies that can denounce their own government while Chinese movies can never take any criticism about themselves. I would take self-promotion over censorship any day.
I’ve been suspecting this for a long time but came across few evidence for it. I’ve seen Chinese funding of Hollywood movies, but it’s always through an American fund, etc. What kind of evidence have you found? To me, the fact that Hollywood would never attack communism, is a big one. Thousands of movies about nazism, zero about the Soviet union and their crimes. Even Cuba is very underrepresented in the industry. Yet differently from a regime that lasted two decades, we are talking about one that persists very well until today.
Um, what are you talking about? There were whole decades of Hollywood having the Reds as the default villain. Everything up to 2000s when they were replaced by middle easterners.
How about the fact that a character in a Marvel movie, ostensibly an inoffensive family film, who was originally Tibetian, was changed to a white woman just so it could make money in China? I don't think Disney has any Chinese ownership, but it's pretty blatant that the industry is bending over backwards to not piss off China and get the box office returns there.
It's not a matter of "separated from opinion", but rather the cutting of certain scenes or modification of certain lines of dialog. They also effectively engage in various forms of product placement on a more nationalistic level.
propaganda meaning they are censoring content of movies, good luck shooting movie where Chinese will be shown as bad guys... it does not need to show them in good light, it's just better not show them at all, if you intended to use them as villains or show truth about them, that's good enough for them
and anyway in recent years they tried to promote China in movies as cooperating nation helping world
Don’t think of it like traditional old world propaganda that’s obviously promoting China. The propaganda can be anything that divides the country. Both are the same result as far as China’s concerned.
I worked for a company that tried to require wechat. I refused. Never got any flak, but missed a lot of comms from the first gen Chinese immigrants in the company.
I posit they use WeChat more than just to censor/spy in wechat, but rather more as an one of a set of apps that can be used to side-channel leak data about the phone/user. (Israel is also the other giant player in this arena). I don't understand any tech-savy privacy conscious person being ok with it, other than being one of those who has completely given up on privacy.
There is a reason the military banned tiktok, for example. (and it's not just because I've never seen a user on tiktok not look like total base-dumbass)
People are routinely jailed in china for sending messages on WeChat [0] [1] [2]... This has been going on almost on a daily basis since WeChat started... Did anyone think they weren't monitoring and censoring it?
Easy answer: to keep in contact with friends who are of Chinese origin. For example any international friends you made in college who moved back home after
It's really useful for note taking. I'm logged in on my phone and main computer, and as I watch lectures I can screenshot useful slides and send it to the file transfer contact. I can also send a text message, and later its search feature lets me go to the context where my query appeared. The messages are stored locally on your devices so the query is lightning fast (unlike if I were using slack).
I'll use it to evict stuff from my head so I can concentrate on other things (a "oh yeah I'm running low on tomatoes" thought results in a message for me to go back to later).
Since the UI is in the style of a messaging program then it's really low friction to enter stuff, as opposed to a dedicated note taking application. It's UI is also so clean and of a design not seen anymore.
Its QR code scanner is really good as well.
It should be noted that I'm also using it to message other people on the platform, but half the time I switch to the application I'm not using it to communicate with other people.
Someone may criticize sending so much data to "scary China" but I'm aware of what data I send through the platforms that I use. You wouldn't send your company's private information to a random server, and there's no reason why any other non company sponsored platform should be trusted.
I'm not into discussing controversial topics so the most scandalous message I've ever sent probably revolved around defending an unpopular bubble tea shop. I have alternative contact means so it's not like I'm being restricted in what I talk about. There's a proper time and place for everything. (and in the west there's memes about landing on a list for viewing an edgy meme or source).
While inside China, it is virtually impossible to work in any capacity, in any field, without using WeChat.
Outside China, it is the most reliable means of communication to people without access to unrestricted internet. This has become even more difficult within the past year with the blocking of Shadowsocks proxies. You are unlikely to have friends with the ability or knowledge to install v2ray+vmess+websocket+tls for a reliable, unrestricted connection.
Your next best option is Facetime/iMessage, in my experience.
My partners' family, who aren't citizens of PRC (nor live there), use it a lot. That's apparently the best app in Chinese language for tech-illiterate people.
About 1/6th these days. Pedantic I know, but it's super common for people to not realize that China's population growth is nearly zero. India will likely have more people than China by 2025.
Readit News
> Upon analysis, files deemed politically sensitive are used to invisibly train and build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system.
Also I think it's super cool how they did the research.
For me it is not a big deal - for most Chinese it is not a big deal. Somehow most people who never touched Wechat it seems to be a big deal.
Every Chinese site I've ever used requires phone number or ID verification. Most of them only allow Chinese-registered phones, meaning it's absolutely impossible to communicate with Chinese people from the outside world, aside from a very small number of carefully vetted services like WeChat.
But I fear the rest of the world looked at China and thought, "Wow, we should've done that a long time ago!" Accounts I registered about a decade ago now demand I confirm an email and sometimes a phone number. Email accounts I've had half my life lock me out unless I link it to my phone number and prove my identity. Some services ask for a fucking ID card scan, which prompts me to just drop the service. Some things I've used in the past only accept US phone area codes, which having left the US, means those services are now completely inaccessible to me.
China says it's for state security. They're at least kind of honest that their intention is to keep the population in check and watch their every movement. The rest of the world says it's for personal security. Then another day passes and another heap of phone numbers, names, SSNs, and addresses leak and another identity is stolen.
Edit: I "felt" like ZOOM is 100% USA company. When I read (here) that the bulk is in China and USA has the shell/legal entity the above was my first thought. When I read some more that everything is routed via China and that their crypto is not actual crypto, I became certain that the Chinese Big Brother was doing that. I am not a conspiracy guy. I just see what China likes to do to its own people and now the out a camera in everyone's faces, "for free".
it's so sad all the other alternatives, facebook/Line/Telegram/etc are still lagging behind Wechat as a chatting tool, if there is one equally good, overseas wechat user might switch.
Dead Comment
Kind of outrageous to criticize WeChat and leave out Facebook, when it clearly wants to join the party. I realize Facebook doesn't implement the same degree of censorship as WeChat, but to be fair, I live in Japan, and even for me the joebiden.info is censored.
That's certainly not a universally agreed upon perspective. Just because you're a private company doesn't mean you can do anything you want (eg. discrimination), hence the existence of regulations.
Whether the company is private or not is immaterial. What matters is its scale, and how much you can actually avoid it.
Facebook is not easily avoided. I personally went under significant social pressure to get an account and actually use it. Getting out had a measurable cost (not being aware of events that mattered to me). That's not too bad, but even then I'm cheating: my SO has an account, and I regularly profit from that.
Same for YouTube: they have a near monopoly on most western audiences. If they block something, that's near censorship. Next to it, most alternatives might as well not exist at all.
Facebook's handling of filtered out messages is honestly not an improvement over WeChat worth celebrating.
Deleted Comment
Why does this not apply to other situations such as who I hire?
Also, is not Facebook used by parts of the US government? If Facebook prevents me from sending that link to any government representative then does that not constitute the government (by choosing to use Facebook as a communication channel) censoring my speech? It would be similar to the case of Trump blocking individuals on Twitter. Imagine if government offices swapped to some religious based chat forum as their official means of communication where messages from all people not of a certain religion (as determined by the sight) are filtered.
The problems arise when the censorship is compelled by third parties who are using it for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of others.
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
This is the first I've heard about this. Had a look at the site and the content loaded doesn't seem to be malicious (technically), just content on some questionable areas about Biden.
What's going on here?
At the bottom it claims: "It is not paid for by any candidate, committee, organization, or PAC." While that may be technically true (it would be hard to verify), it's certainly misleading. I'm assuming because of that claim it runs afoul of FB's community standards.
Dead Comment
So to me it's in the grey area bordering on black, but I'm also not a fan of this type of campaigning (playing on the man).The fact that they try to present it as an actual Biden website is also questionable.
Are we really at the point where we can defend censorship of a website that doesn't have any illegal content, no links to illegal content, and the purpose of which is not to do anything illegal, but whose only purpose make ones political opinions known.
On Facebook messenger, one of the biggest messaging apps in the world. This is honestly disgusting, and I think they are going to face backlash for it.
They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Or are we using propaganda and opinions interchangeably here
Here's a whole article on it: https://www.cnet.com/features/marvel-is-censoring-films-for-...
It's not a matter of "separated from opinion", but rather the cutting of certain scenes or modification of certain lines of dialog. They also effectively engage in various forms of product placement on a more nationalistic level.
Dead Comment
and anyway in recent years they tried to promote China in movies as cooperating nation helping world
I posit they use WeChat more than just to censor/spy in wechat, but rather more as an one of a set of apps that can be used to side-channel leak data about the phone/user. (Israel is also the other giant player in this arena). I don't understand any tech-savy privacy conscious person being ok with it, other than being one of those who has completely given up on privacy.
There is a reason the military banned tiktok, for example. (and it's not just because I've never seen a user on tiktok not look like total base-dumbass)
Mind elaborating on this?
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/jailed...
[1] http://www.phayul.com/2020/03/22/42960/
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/tech...
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-censor...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/technology/china-huawei-i...
What's the use case?
I'll use it to evict stuff from my head so I can concentrate on other things (a "oh yeah I'm running low on tomatoes" thought results in a message for me to go back to later).
Since the UI is in the style of a messaging program then it's really low friction to enter stuff, as opposed to a dedicated note taking application. It's UI is also so clean and of a design not seen anymore.
Its QR code scanner is really good as well.
It should be noted that I'm also using it to message other people on the platform, but half the time I switch to the application I'm not using it to communicate with other people.
Someone may criticize sending so much data to "scary China" but I'm aware of what data I send through the platforms that I use. You wouldn't send your company's private information to a random server, and there's no reason why any other non company sponsored platform should be trusted.
I'm not into discussing controversial topics so the most scandalous message I've ever sent probably revolved around defending an unpopular bubble tea shop. I have alternative contact means so it's not like I'm being restricted in what I talk about. There's a proper time and place for everything. (and in the west there's memes about landing on a list for viewing an edgy meme or source).
Outside China, it is the most reliable means of communication to people without access to unrestricted internet. This has become even more difficult within the past year with the blocking of Shadowsocks proxies. You are unlikely to have friends with the ability or knowledge to install v2ray+vmess+websocket+tls for a reliable, unrestricted connection.
Your next best option is Facetime/iMessage, in my experience.
In places where I have almost no signal, a WeChat call will still sound good.
I'm assuming you mean of not-Chinese origin, basically expats. Yes?
Are there no other options? Are no non-Chinese messengers allowed in China?
Deleted Comment
Why are Americans using WeChat I'm not sure.