stay away from wechat
1.0.0
Collect WeChat’s anti-humanity designs, shameless censorship, infringement of user privacy, monitoring of chat records, attempts to control people’s lives and other human rights violations. We hope that users will recognize WeChat’s shortcomings, provide alternatives to WeChat, and encourage users to vote with their feet. ,Refuse to use WeChat?️.
Welcome to submit Issues and Pull requests
Is convenience really the only value in our lives? The so-called spiritual life does not mean learning aesthetics or artistic creation from experts. It actually turns spiritual life into secular life. The more WeChat becomes a way of life, the more we need to be cautious about it. —— Li Ruyi
In the mainland, where network control is so strict, it seems that only WeChat can guarantee consistent smoothness and high speed. But the deeper reason is probably the laziness of thinking caused by being deprived of the right to choose for a long time: Since I can socialize, read, and consume just by opening WeChat, why should I spend time looking for each one in the outside world? —— PlatyHsu
No one knows how the change happened, but by the time someone realizes that the change seems to be a problem, all rescue measures are too late. Don't expect the other person to change. Freedom can only be gained by yourself.
The goal of public policy everywhere should be to increase access to the internet – the whole goddam internet, not some corporate-controlled alcove – for as many people as possible. By condoning zero-rating we will condemn to a lifetime of servitude as one of Master Zuckerberg's sharecroppers. We can, and should, do better than that. —— John Naughton
The goal of public policy everywhere should be to increase access to the Internet—the full Internet, not niches controlled by a few giants—so that it benefits as many people as possible. Accepting zero rates means being forced to commit yourself to Zuckerberg’s serfs for the rest of your life. We can and should do better.
Even if you ask your friends, "How about we try another chat software", it is by no means meaningless. Most people won’t ask, so asking is the beginning of change. Ask in person, relatives, colleagues, and classmates. I asked during lunch break and on the way home from school. Ask seriously but gently, discuss seriously but not confrontationally. Don't be afraid that they think you are weird. There will always be people who think you are weird, but there will always be people who have the same beliefs as you. —— Li Ruyi
I argue that western tech giants, like Facebook and Google, have inherent drawbacks of the capitalism. For example, they tend to violate the privacy of users for profits. But in China, big tech companies are worse with both defects of capitalism and totalitarianism, as they are totally controlled by the authoritarian regime.
public reporting
User dissatisfaction
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Alternatives to WeChat
instant messaging
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Recommended reading
Related projects
| date | ️ Title | source | backup |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-04-13 | China's WeChat censoring 'sensitive' photos, not just text, study shows | South China Morning Post | Internet Archive |
| 2018-01-01 | Li Shufu blasts WeChat for violating privacy | News in the circle, YouTube | Internet Archive |
| 2018-09-21 | Why I choose not to rely on WeChat in life | New York Times Chinese website | Internet Archive |
| 2019-07-15 | How WeChat censors private conversations, automatically in real time | MIT Technology Review | Internet Archive |
| 2020-06-19 | Escape from WeChat | Terminal Media | Telegraph |
| 2020-08-27 | How WeChat Censored the Coronavirus Pandemic | WIRED | Internet Archive |
| 2020-12-22 | WeChat Becomes a Powerful Surveillance Tool Everywhere in China | The Wall Street Journal | Archive.today |
| 2021-01-24 | After QQ reads the user's browser, while saying that an input method is needed to protect user privacy, it also reads the WeChat of the user's browser. | V2EX | Archive.today |
| 2021-01-25 | A woman from Guizhou was handcuffed and detained by Bijie police across the city for calling the community party secretary a "bastard party secretary" in a WeChat group. | Oriental Today | Zhuxinshe, Archive.today |
| 2021-02-03 | The first-instance judgment of Shenzhen Nanshan Court held that WeChat friend relationships do not belong to user privacy | People's rule of law | Zhuxinshe, Archive.today |
| 2021-02-06 | Ma Huateng: More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every day, and we have mastered the facial changes of almost every Chinese person over the past ten years | Archive.today | |
| 2021-07-06 | All public accounts of sexual minority associations in Tsinghua University, Peking University and other major universities have been banned | Terminal Media | Zhuxinshe, Archive.today |
| 2021-11-01 | A man in Ningxia was accused of insulting a police officer by posting an emoticon in a WeChat group and was detained administratively for 9 days | The Paper | Crow Watch, Archive.today |
| 2021-11-25 | China's State-Run Companies Limit Use of Tencent's Messaging App | The Wall Street Journal | Zhuxinshe, Archive.today |
| 2022-10-18 | The dark side of a super app like WeChat | MIT Technology Review | Internet Archive |
| ️ Title | source | backup |
|---|---|---|
| A thousand hours of escaping from WeChat control | minority | Telegraph |
| Incomprehensible "take a shot" | Archive.today | |
| WeChat = GFW | world in one day | Internet Archive |
| WeChat is a way of life | world in one day | Archive.today |
| What evil has WeChat done? | Internet Archive | |
| Ten years of product thinking on WeChat | Chen Cangjie | IPFS |
| After WeChat recommended square dance content to me | Green mountains and green waters | Internet Archive |
| Understand WeChat The Hard Way | Neverland | Telegraph |
| After the circle of friends was blocked by WeChat | TomBen | Internet Archive |
| Please stop your Zhang Xiaolong behavior: How long will WeChat engulf the Chinese people? | cool | Archive.today |
| An article that seriously discusses census data is considered illegal on the WeChat public platform. How can we talk about public discussion on WeChat? | Archive.today | |
| WeChat scientific research, Best scientific research? | Two Circles | Internet Archive |
| In China: Why doesn’t TA use WeChat? | iYouPort | IPFS |
| WeChat video account is essentially just another business for attention merchants | Internet Archive | |
| How to fight against giants | world in one day | Internet Archive |
| Zhang Xiaolong's Visit to Relatives | Weibo @malt puree | Internet Archive |
| People who don’t use WeChat | figure | Internet Archive |
| Life is short, stay away from WeChat | Hayami | Internet Archive |
| WeChat repeatedly reads user photo albums in the iOS background | Apple Nuts | IPFS |
| For the sixth time, He Weifang received a handwritten "letter accusing Tencent of arbitrary account ban" on WeChat | China digital age | |
| Taking stock of WeChat’s four major “anti-humanity” designs | Luv Letter | - |
| When I saw people sharing links over and over again in Moments today and being blocked over and over again, I thought again: This is why I hate WeChat. | Archive.today | |
| As a social enterprise, its purpose is to make commercial profits, but it assumes the responsibility of maintaining national security - I think this is WeChat now. | Matters | Archive.today |
| Anti-human WeChat file storage logic | Weibo selections | - |
| People who love WeChat, in my opinion, lack a spirit of resistance and freedom | Subi | Intert Archive |
| date | title | author |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-05-07 | We Chat, They Watch: How International Users Unwittingly Build up WeChat's Chinese Censorship Apparatus | Jeffrey Knockel, Christopher Parsons, Lotus Ruan, Ruohan Xiong, Jedidiah Crandall, and Ron Deibert |
| date | title | author |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-10-04 | Censorship in the Semi-Private Domain: A Theory of Cross-Domain Variation and Evidence from WeChat | Elliot Ji, Zack Bowersox |
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Nothing to hide - Wikipedia
Right to privacy — Can online communication be private? - Medium
Are you free on the Internet? - Medium
The Right to Privacy - Harvard Law Review
Why Privacy Matters - TED
Why We Should End the Data Economy - Reboot
Escape from WeChat Manifesto
