In China, social networks are used quite differently than in Italy and other Western countries: Facebook and Instagram are blocked, to begin with, and practically the whole sector is dominated by WeChat, the main Chinese social network. In addition to exchanging messages like on WhatsApp, WeChat is used to share photos and posts, but also to make payments both online and in physical stores, call a taxi, order food at home and even to start proceedings for a divorce.
It has a billion users in the world, a number more or less equal to 70 percent of the people who live in China, where today it has become indispensable for the daily life of many. An article in the online magazine Sixth Tone (written mainly by Chinese, in English) told about the life of the minority of people in China who do not use WeChat, because it is contrary to the way in which the social network manages the data of its users. Being without WeChat in China can be complicated, both in work and in private life, because it has entered so many aspects of people's daily routine. Matthew Brennan, co-founder of the consulting firm China Channel, which explains to foreign companies how to use WeChat, said that using the social network is now “practically unavoidable” for anyone who wants to have a normal life in Chinese society.
A 36-year-old lawyer, interviewed by Sixth Tone as long as she remains anonymous, said that every time she has a new client she must remember to warn him not to have WeChat because in China it is assumed that everyone can be contacted on the social network. Her parents are always trying to get her to download the app to be able to talk to her more easily, and on one occasion when she went abroad with a group of colleagues she had to get in touch with text messages or phone calls, thus making them spend money.
Sixth Tone also interviewed an executive at a state-owned tech company who asked to be called 3MzYWI5bTcxaTM, a random code, to be able to track his citations on the internet (and that alone shows how much he cares about his privacy). His rejection of WeChat in everyday life is facilitated by the fact that at work, for reasons of confidentiality, he is obliged to communicate using an internal app. Furthermore, most of the people he communicates with, tech savvy like him, do not like WeChat and prefer to use Telegram, the messaging app that allows you to have encrypted conversations and go through the so-called “Great Firewall of China” using VPN connections.
Even 3MzYWI5bTcxaTM, however, had some difficulties: while he was in the city of Chongqing, in southwestern China, he found himself unable to buy anything in a bar because it only accepted payments on WeChat, although there is a law that prohibits shops from refusing cash payments.
People who choose not to use WeChat do so for various reasons, mainly related to privacy. The first is that a cybersecurity law that entered into force in China last year obliges companies working with internet communications to store their users' temporal and spatial access coordinates for at least six months, in order to help the forces. order in case of need. In theory, archived data shouldn't include conversation content: WeChat's company Tencent has denied archiving and analyzing it, but its privacy policy says it can share personal information about users if requested by authorities.
The second reason some Chinese people don't want to use WeChat is the way it filters content that is visible to users, to prevent them from leaving their app to go to another. Last March, for example, the social network blocked links that led to Douyin and 30 other video sharing services. Direct links to Tencent's competitors, such as Alibaba, the large Chinese e-commerce site, and Jinri Toutiao news aggregator, are also blocked on WeChat. Due to this filter, certain news does not reach WeChat and every now and then the government blocks all content with a certain keyword or certain images: for example those of Winnie the Pooh, used in the past to make fun of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Over the years WeChat has become increasingly adept at detecting and censoring this type of content. For tech companies it is actually more of an obligation than a choice, given that Chinese law requires online platforms to be responsible together with users for the content that is shared on them: for Western companies this is not the case, except for violations. of copyright.
There are also well-known people in China who have controversially chosen not to use WeChat. In 2016, influential tech blogger Lawrence Li announced that he would be deleting the app, considering it a place where “childish, anti-intellectual, vulgar and boring content prevails” and criticizing the fact that it does not allow official accounts to indicate links of sites that do not belong to Tencent. According to Li, this encourages people to violate copyright laws, because it pushes them to copy content that is not on Tencent sites by uploading it to services also accessible from WeChat, “duplicating the web”. Li now lives in Japan, where she can easily be without WeChat, and communicates with her parents who live in China using iMessage and WhatsApp. In the post in which he announced that he would delete WeChat, he defined it as «a communication and information tool that penetrates Chinese society so deeply that one cannot speak of convenience alone. It shapes our minds and our cultural life “.
In the past, even Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, had tried to live without using WeChat: he announced that he would stop using the social network in 2013, when he launched his own messaging app. The project turned out to be a failure, however, and last year Ma said he went back to using WeChat.
