Interesting discussions going around the Chinese Internet re the power WeChat wields as a super app that rolls your work, social, financial life into one.
Apparently when you get suspended, it becomes logistically difficult to pay back the loans you took out on the platform.
Toll payments in China are all made online these days.
One blogger said he missed several toll payments because his old WeChat account got suspended and the toll payment system wouldn’t accept a new WeChat account.
He worried that his financial creditworthiness may take a hit.
Per the discussions, once your account gets suspended, you can still log in, but you can’t send any messages.
In other words, you have to manually add your contacts when you create a new account.
There’s an appeals process, but I haven’t come across any success stories.
Would other platforms be any different?
The answer many people gave is that we should at least separate our financial from our social life, i.e. use WeChat for IM and use Alipay for payments.
The risk of having your account suspended though, can never be reduced to zero.
An interesting side-note to this story is that the screenshot of this blogger’s complaint is blocked on WeChat and other Tencent-owned platforms.
People are saying they tried to share the screenshot in group chats and on their timelines but their friends couldn’t see it.
Lots to think about here...
What are the consequences when natural monopolies and all-encompassing platforms in tech meet tight speech controls?
You can follow people’s discussions here:
weibointl.api.weibo.com/share/16879621…
weibointl.api.weibo.com/share/16879606…
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