> It is practically impossible for person in China to opt out of WeChat.
I call bullshit on this one. All necessities are also covered by AliPay, and you just need to convince your contacts to communicate through good old phone call/SMS/email/one of the alternative chat apps.
WeChat only dominates all aspects of your digital life if you let it. There’s a huge amount of competition for every single aspect. Citing Gruber on this topic is as good as citing a random Chinese person on Facebook usage in America.
Source: got by in China myself with practically no WeChat usage, certainly nothing essential, for a long time.
True, Wechat may have totally monopolized social (after ten years in China I literally know zero people who don’t use Wechat for that), but it shares its status as the Everything App with Alipay.
Currently you’re basically a non-person if you use neither Wechat nor Alipay. By non-person, I mean it’s impossible to travel by plane or train, visit most places of business, or make purchases at most of said places of business.
We can thank Covid for the first two. The payment stuff is that it’s just so damn convenient that I stopped carrying cash years ago, and so did everyone else, so most merchants look at you sideways if you whip out some maos when it’s time to pay.
I call bullshit on this one. All necessities are also covered by AliPay, and you just need to convince your contacts to communicate through good old phone call/SMS/email/one of the alternative chat apps.
WeChat only dominates all aspects of your digital life if you let it. There’s a huge amount of competition for every single aspect. Citing Gruber on this topic is as good as citing a random Chinese person on Facebook usage in America.
Source: got by in China myself with practically no WeChat usage, certainly nothing essential, for a long time.