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Comment by RandomGuyDTB | Hacker News Reader

If every one of my friends and even my employer used an app to conduct business and I refused to get it no matter how much they tried to tell me to because I was concerned about my privacy I'd be ostracized. This did happen to me with Facebook to an extent, and Facebook isn't nearly as much of a mammoth as WeChat. Stop pretending it's a choice.

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Why did you assume I "pretended" it's a choice? It IS a choice and it has always been. Most people just decided the trade-off of being denied employment and other opportunities is not worth preserving whatever privacy these tech giants are trying to "steal" from you. Market economies rarely cater to the few. That has always been the exception and not the norm.

By that line of reasoning, I have a choice of whether or not to hand over my wallet when someone mugs me -- I've just decided that the tradeoff of getting a knife in my stomach is not worth whatever money is being stolen from me.

What you're proposing is an interesting philosophical argument, but not a particularly useful way to think when building a society. We're trying to limit Hobson's Choices, even if we can't completely eliminate them all the time.

Just choose to use wechat for messaging, and use apps for everything else. And stop complaining about why wechat is getting popular for other people. If your friends are on Facebook, it is not your problem to worry about. It is like if your friend is dating a girl you don’t like, get over it. People made their choices already.

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