After reading Denico’s post Get Off that, WeChat, I realized that I had a few thoughts on the topic of WeChat’s compliance in providing user data to the Chinese government.
They would lose traffic as people are now put off from the fact that China is now watching every move of WeChat users
iOS / iPhone, Álvaro Ibáñez
I agree with Denico’s opinion on how these actions are infringing on user privacy. It should be recognized that not only China is doing this, US is also on every single one of their borders. What I do realize from this information is the fact that Weixin (social media platform of WeChat) is a very ethical company. They are taking responsibility for their actions, making their decisions known to their users, and willingly facing the foreign critics head-on.
In discussion about their strategy as a company, I believe that they have made the best decision they could have made in the situation. I agree that if they did not have to provide information to the government, it would be best if they did not, but I do not believe this was a time where they had a choice. Foreign social medias are blocked in China, because the government is unable to control it. If Weixin were to decline the right of access to their user data, they would be no different than Facebook. Being blocked does not mean it is impossible to access, since a VPN will grant it, but that all transactions would be heavily monitored, and the general public would find it too much of a chore to use, and hence lose users. I applaud Weixin’s choice of making an announcement on this topic, if this was found out by a third-party who makes a big deal out of it, Weixin would truly lose their users’ trust.
One of the points of similarity of successful businesses in China are their compliance to the rules and regulations, only with these points of similarity, could they play the game of business and exist on a product positioning map.
I do not believe Weixin would lose many users over this decision, since the value of the network is greater than the security tradeoff. The Chinese government may be your largest stalker in China, but what about Facebook and Google. One of my friends wrote his math IA on how much people sleep using a loophole in Facebook’s system. He was able to find out when people were using Facebook or had it logged in with background clicks. I could swear they know everything about me, but that has not stopped me from using their services.
Word Count: 443