
What Would a WeChat Replacement Need? - oskarth
https://vac.dev/wechat-replacement-need
======
m11a
I think people that feel WeChat is simply a social network don't understand
WeChat. Though the article doesn't say this, the comments here and popular
opinion generally think that.

From my time visiting China I'm not sure it's possible to live, in the urban
areas, without WeChat. Payments are basically all through WeChat; I found
places that didn't take Visa/Mastercard (or even know what those were,
although that may have just been my pronunciation).

So the answer to this article is simple:

\- For China: CCP approval

\- For America/Europe: WeChat would never happen, unless there was severe
monopolisation that allowed a company to roll something like WeChat out
successfully, or the federal government / national governments mandated it

The article discusses how a WeChat replacement may be done using blockchain,
not what a WeChat replacement needs to be successful (as the title would
imply), or what may be the most technically viable way of doing it.

~~~
shalmanese
Nowadays, it's literally impossible to live in China without either WeChat or
Alipay as health codes are integrated into the apps and it can be impossible
to move outside without displaying your health code. Travelling on trains,
planes and long haul busses now require you to have the app.

I don't think enough has been made about how extraordinary it is that a
sovereign government has let such a core governmental function simply be
handed over to for-profit businesses. It would be like, in the US, registering
for your drivers license by Signing in with Google and being bound by the
Google TOS. Commit an offense that causes Google to delete your account and
now you can't legally drive anymore.

~~~
blackrock
I recall, this actually happened a few months ago, but with Uber.

What happened, was Uber started dropping customers that had a poor rating.
Maybe they didn’t give a $5 tip, so the driver gave them a poor rating. Who
knows why.

But the result is that the public, the customer in question, can no longer use
Uber’s services.

This is terrifying, in that Uber wanted to eliminate public taxi services, and
privatize it on their proprietary platform.

If you think this through, then what could be the potential long term effect
of this?

Possibly that we as consumers, are now beholden to some random rating system,
by some private company, that has the final authority to withhold essential
public services from us.

And from what we have seen, these private businesses have an effective
lobbying system, that can get lawmakers to draft laws in their favor.

~~~
whytai
A few points. Uber drivers cannot see if individual riders have tipped them.
They also cannot see your individual rating of them, nor you of theirs.

Policing their own platform works both ways. When I order an uber I expect a
certain quality of service. ie a safe, comfortable ride. Likewise, when I
drive for uber I expect people to respect my property (my car). I expect uber
to fulfill both of these things so that it is a usable platform.

Beyond that, if you get removed from using uber can't you use lyft, didi, a
taxi, or public transit?

I would hope that the long term effect of this is that people behave in ubers.
I personally have had friends throw up in them or drunkenly harass female
drivers.

~~~
aianus
> Uber drivers cannot see if individual riders have tipped them.

This is not true, I can see exactly which rides included a tip. However, I
can't see this before I rate the rider so I can't penalize a rider for not
tipping.

------
throwaway6250
People seem to have the idea that WeChat is some sort of amazing application
-- it's not. In fact the only reason why it has the market share it does in
China is simply because all competitors are blocked.

Some of WeChat's real pain points are: \- No backing up your messages to the
cloud like WhatsApp or having them loaded from the server like Facebook
Messenger. Moving all your messages from one phone to another is quite the
ordeal .

\- Complete disregard for platform standards. Specifically notifications on
Android and Windows 10 are atrocious. Both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger
have notifications that are well integrated with the especially the Android
notification system, WeChat notifications however are not.

-A lot of nice to have chat features are either non existent or have just recently been introduced. For example a poor implementation of quoting a previous message was just introduced like a month ago, and there are no reactions for specific messages -- and no timeline for implementing them either.

WeChat does have quite a bit of different "apps" built into it, but not really
more convenient to use than the separate apps are. It's mainly just a casualty
of China's lack of anti monopoly legislation.On my phone I have Alipay (the
other half of china's online payment duopoly) installed together with WeChat,
and almost always use it for payment (It's pretty much accepted everywhere
WeChat is)

~~~
tanilama
> simply because all competitors are blocked.

International competitors may be. Till this day, I didn't see something come
close to what WeChat is offering in China.

WeChat is like Chrome, it is so big and ubiquitous in China, it can dictate
standard.

The online backup of messages itself is a pain point I agree, but local
transfer is possible, though a bit cumbersome.

~~~
verall
I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in
China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power. Chrome
is enormous and ubiquitous because maintaining a modern browser is orders of
magnitude more difficult than maintaining a chat application.

Why do you think there a many competitors outside China but none in?

~~~
tanilama
> I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in
> China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power

But how can there isn't a WeChat competitor, that actually does all the things
WeChat is capable of in US/EU?

Regarding WeChat as if it is another chat application only means you have
never been a regular user of it, which is probably true to most HN folks.

WeChat actually has its own embedded WebView within it and JS execution engine
also. It also has the whole Paypal counterpart ships with it. The whole WeChat
ecosystem is probably on par with the whole Facebook, probably more complex
than Chrome I would say.

~~~
filoleg
> But how can there isn't a WeChat competitor, that actually does all the
> things WeChat is capable of in US/EU?

For many reasons, but I think a major one is because neither EU nor US (both
people and governments) would be cool with all aspects of one's life being
functional ONLY by using this one app. Imagine if a WeChat competitor came out
in EU/US, and now you cannot use transit without this app at all, or buy
things, or get a taxi, etc.

This is extremely anti-competitive and goes even beyond the usual monopoly
definition. Major politicians these days run for president on the promise to
break down Amazon, Google, etc. And neither of those come even close to the
monopolistic reach on the scale that WeChat operates on.

~~~
tanilama
What you are saying is to provide an explanation why WeChat-like apps didn't
and probably are not going to happen outside of China, but it still means
there is NO WeChat alternatives outside China.

The reason is not that important however.

The Chinese market is unique, Western economy can't create something like
WeChat doesn't mean that its existence is something abnormal.

Chinese companies create something more to the liking of Chinese consumers
should get anyone surprised. When it comes to internet, and no one is enjoying
natural advantage.

------
pwinnski
It would need to be introduced in a single large city in 2011 and spread from
there with the implicit backing of the federal government.

It would not need a blockchain. There is no reason whatsoever for basing this
on a blockchain.

~~~
naringas
But then we have to trust our government...

and governments vary in their trustworthiness

~~~
vbezhenar
It does not matter whether you trust the government or not. The only thing
that matters is whether you can resist the government or not.

------
gruez
He missed a point (and probably an important one for wechat's home market):
CCP approval.

/snark

~~~
ardy42
Definitely. Literally half of the features in the "What do we want?" section
would get his replacement _banned_ in the PRC, which is one of the few markets
where WeChat is popular enough to even be something to replace.

~~~
Blake_Emigro
_And much more. Not going to through it all in detail, and there are probably
many things I don’t know about WeChat since I’m not a heavy user living in
mainland China._

The team definitely needs to get the experience of being behind the great
firewall. Try using a VPN there to watch YouTube, try using a locally
purchased cell phone without access to Google Play or the Apple app store. Try
bashing PRC government policies in WeChat.

Only then will they see how tightly things are locked down. It's not like
they're the only ones to have this idea, so why doesn't it exist? Oh, because
it's really difficult and even dangerous with the current police state that
controls the communications.

------
timwaagh
I would be interested in a we hat replacement, but as soon as I read ethereum
I thought: nah. Cryptocurrencies are just not compatible with mainstream
consumption. Why? Because I get paid in euros. And you might get paid in
dollars. And a wechat user gets paid in Yuan. But nobody gets paid in
ethereum.

~~~
wolco
That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to be
paid in bitcoin.

~~~
ardy42
>> But nobody gets paid in ethereum.

> That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to
> be paid in bitcoin.

The statement is true, if properly understood. Colloquially, "nobody gets paid
in [cryptocurrency]" means that it's so unusual to get paid in it that it's
reasonable to assume no one does. That's not a statement that can be shown to
be false with a few counterexamples.

------
lnanek2
Seems like a silly article. Even if they had feature parity today, very few
people would use the replacement because their friends aren't using it, their
family aren't using it, the shops they want to buy from aren't using it, the
people they meet aren't using it...

~~~
soylentcola
Exactly. Setting aside the issues of whether Google would be preferable to
Facebook as a central "portal" like this, they ran into the exact same issue
when they launched G+.

At the time it had feature parity (and in many cases, superiority) with
Facebook, but even though loads of people already had Google accounts for
Gmail or Docs, etc. they didn't want to post to both Facebook and G+.

Since everyone was on Facebook and less than everyone was on G+, it didn't
matter that you could silo your contacts more easily, integrate voice/video
chat, make online/in person payments, or maintain some semblance of a personal
"page" in addition to just looking at an activity stream.

And as we've seen over and over, once something is seen as an "also-ran" or
less popular option, it largely becomes a joke among the potential userbase
and definitely not a success.

------
verst
WeChat is many things all in a single app:

    
    
      - A payments platform called WeChat Pay (think PayPal, Venmo, Apply Pay, Android Pay all combined)
    
      - A consumer messenger platform with voice and video chat (think Facebook Messenger + WhatsApp)
    
      - A friends newsfeed called Moments with audio and video support, external links but visibility of 
     content is timeboxed in days, weeks or months (think Facebook News Feed with a touch of Instagram Stories)
    
      - An e-commerce store platform called WeChat Store (think Shopify)
    
      - A business platform called "Official Accounts" with many features:
    
        * A business / bot messaging platform (think Facebook Messenger for Business)
    
        * An advertising platform
    
        * A content distribution platform, primarily through Official Account Subscription Accounts (like blogs, news, think Medium). WeChat offers this through "Channels", "Top Stories", "Official Accounts" and "Mini Programs".
    
        * WeChat Official Accounts Service Accounts can create "Mini Programs" which are rich integrations and tightly integrate with your linked WeChat Payments account, for example:
    
          1. Didi Chuxing for Ridesharing (Uber)
    
          2. Mobike for Bike Rental (Lime Bike etc)
    
          3. Meituan Dianping for e-commerce and food delivery
    
          4. Douban, Yishenghuo, Yoopay etc for Event / Concert Tickets (think Eventbrite, Ticketmaster)
    

Most noteworthy is that WeChat Mini Programs are standalone and don't deeplink
to other apps. No aspect of WeChat does Deeplinking to any other app. You
always stay in WeChat.

------
tanilama
Surprised to see no Payments mentioned at all, which makes the post makes very
little sense.

WeChat is also, and by large, a financial service. Payment and transfer is
happening all the time on this platform, and to replace that is a magnitude
difficult than just replace the chat.

------
cocktailpeanuts
You will probably never come up with the right answer for this question
because the question itself is wrong. You never build a "WeChat replacement"
by building a WeChat replacement. You just end up with a knockoff if you start
from this question.

------
robjan
Spoiler alert: the answer is Blockchain according to the post.

Site is running slow, here's an archive:
[https://archive.is/w1HMt](https://archive.is/w1HMt)

------
querez
This might be onpopular, but I don't think you should aim for "no censorship"
and "no way for authority to police people". As we're seeing in today's social
media, unfettered communication is not something you might want. Think of all
the misinformation, trolling and conspiracy theories going on in our western
social media _despite_ very heavy efforts to contain them by Facebook, Google
and Twitter. This is biting us hard in our current crisis, where people are
going as far as burning down 5G masts, thinking they are heros fighting
against the government-ordered spread of Covid-19 [0]. The older I get, the
more I start to think that the police fulfills a very fundamental function in
our society, no matter how free that society thinks it is. And we likely do
want some policing in our virtual worlds as well. Whatever the next social
media is going to be (it seems to me that this is what you're trying to plan
out here), it should include some sort of moderation option of some case.

[0]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g-uk.html)

------
freewizard
You don’t just build a product like WeChat or Facebook. You grow your product
to that level.

What WeChat/Facebook are today is highly path-dependent hence you don’t get to
replicate that, and your intelligence and ambition probably won’t let you
either.

Stop try to replace them, build sth different and help people in a new and
better way. With that, you might be able to transcend them.

------
krcz
Telegram was on a good path to become WeChat replacement, with its Telegram
Open Network blockchain an Gram cryptocurrency coming and plans to add wide
range of services including decentralized storage, web pages and payment
channels. But now it looks that part has been killed by SEC, so the niche is
still unoccupied.

~~~
foenix
Do you have more info about being killed by the SEC? I'm curious about this
because I was looking forward to a Western Competitor to WeChat.

~~~
krcz
Sure:

* TON blog: [https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-spee...](https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-speed-up-suitlaw/)

* nice summary of how US securities law affected TON (from October 2019): [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-t...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-the-telegram-ico-what-this-means-and-what-happens-now/)

* verdict in the case: [https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wins-injunction-against-telegram-blockchain-launch-in-key-ico-case-idUSKBN21C3N0)

Some investors are considering launching independent blockchain based on open-
sourced TON technology. But even if they do, it's not clear when is Telegram
going to integrate wallet with their app, if ever.

~~~
AVTizzle
Great summary.

I'm very biased (active developer in Telegram ecosystem), but I'm having a
hard time imagining Durov letting this SEC case stop him.

Even if he has to return _all_ the funds, I'm confident he will still push
forward and bring TON and Grams into production.

It's less of a straight path, but Durov's smart and stubborn - two valuable
traits in this circumstace.

------
hank_z
WeChat's dominance in Chinese social media is mainly due to its close
relationship with CCP. It would be a different story if the market was open to
west tech companies. Talking about a censorship resistant social media in
China is completely a waste of time.

------
etherpeopleses
This technology has a lot of potential. I have played around with Status for a
while and it has a real potential to surpass the safety functionalities of
Telegram and Signal.

------
ausjke
LINE, whatsapp etc are catching up wechat.

Instead of cloning wechat, an alternative would be developing a proxy between
IM apps, i.e. all wechat messages can be forwarded to whatsapp so it become
part of whatsapp, well, kind of, it's painful to use whatsapp, LINE, telegram,
wechat at the same time, need something to "unite" them so we can go to one
place and do it all.

~~~
t0astbread
Wasn't XMPP supposed to do something like that?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_proto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_protocols)

~~~
ryukafalz
XMPP does it, Matrix does it:
[https://matrix.org/bridges/](https://matrix.org/bridges/)

...honestly most of the open chat protocols end up with bridges since it's
easier to do there than with the proprietary ones. WhatsApp for example will
ban you if they see you trying to connect with a third-party client; using the
Matrix bridge actually involves running Android with the official client in a
VM.

------
kgc
1\. Government approval (the ability to record and snoop on all conversations)
2\. Wechat would have to lose government approval.

------
kaixi
WeChat is a not a chat app. It's a micro universe. Imagine WhatsApp, Facebook,
Twitter, Paypal, Uber, etc. and an entire app platform all integrated into a
single app. That's WeChat.

------
yalogin
This is what facebook wanted to do when they launched their APIa long time
ago, never came to pass. WeChat did it. Its a whole operating system in
itself.

------
lvturner
I only skim read this, but it feels like you could swap "WeChat" for any
messaging system or social networking site

~~~
tensor
That's definitely not true. WeChat has a bunch of ecommerce stuff built in
among other features. You can pay for stuff on WeChat and there are stores. It
even has translation built in to facilitate buying and selling between people
from different countries.

I think there are also apps and other stuff there too. It's more like a chat
app that became an ecommerce and mini-app platform.

~~~
sho_hn
It's similar with KakaoTalk in Korea, which now also has a payment system in
addition to acting as a regular bank, and allows you to buy various things
including, say, hairdresser appointments. 93% smartphone market share.

~~~
verst
Kakao has a separate app for everything. Quite different from WeChat.
KakaoTalk, KakaoTaxi, KakaoPay etc etc

I wouldn't say that those are all extremely well integrated with each other.

~~~
sho_hn
Sorta both - the hairdresser booking and other commerce is in the main
messenger app.

------
amachefe
Chinese govt (firewall) and people of China

------
silvether
Feature #1: Censorship circumvention.

