Regarding Snapchat - the company that cares about privacy wouldn't require so many permissions (including a permission to receive SMS messages).
Also, you can opt out of Wechat just as you can opt out of FB, so I'm not sure I see your point. Sure you can't opt out of chinese censorship in general but the chilling effect in both cases is where I see the analogy. It's bad for online platforms to do that whether by coercion or direct force.
At present, in Western nations, it is somewhat easy to, say, self-host certain social media platforms (from Wordpress to Mastodon) for friends and family and whatnot that could be used for more private, less advertiser-monitored social media interaction. Assuming you get buy in among your friends, this pretty much avoids issues with advertiser and employer snooping that you have on large social media sites. You can then keep your Facebooks and Twitters for your "public face" (or ditch them entirely).
I don't know if the same applies in China.
Losing a job can be just as catastrophic as a jail term.
Especially if it brands you for future job positions too, as "that person that was fired because X".
Not everybody has it as good as in-demand developers, job wise.
And employer blacklists (e.g. of union types) have been a thing for ages, and can wreck havoc to a person's life (killing their economic prospects) in the way that a jail sentence might not.
Is it a guarantee that you will get quality food in a democratic country's prison, like prisons of US?