Saturday, September 22, 2018

Learning to Survive Without WeChat (AUDREY JIAJIA LI, NYT, 2018-9-21) 为何我选择不依赖微信生活

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEcK-CHK2d8

https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20180921/learning-to-survive-without-wechat/dual/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/opinion/learning-to-survive-without-wechat-in-china.html

I have tried to persuade people I know to switch to other messaging services that have end-to-end encryption — to no avail. Since most of their contacts are on WeChat and they are so reliant on its services, they see no reason to leave. Whenever I bring up privacy concerns, the usual response is, “If you have nothing to hide, why do you mind the government accessing your data?” Sadly, this echoes a statement by Robin Li, the chief executive of the Chinese search engine giant Baidu: If, he said, the Chinese people “are able to trade privacy for convenience, for safety, for efficiency, in a lot of cases they are willing to do that.”