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Comment by gemjam | Hacker News Reader

Bloomberg did a nice video about the real implications; Chinese app style payments would deprive banks of their cut of transaction processing.[1]

Isn't it strange that the Chinese copied facebook, but now facebook copys WeChat

"U.S. Banks Are Terrified of Chinese Payment Apps" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJh_Uir5EMI

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/technology/facebook-zucke...

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> Isn't it strange that the Chinese copied facebook, but now facebook copys WeChat

Not really, Facebook is lacking in originality and sees how much money can be made (Wechat is doing it).

They also see how they can harvest huge amounts of data on what people buy with a high degree of preciseness.

Every company of a certain size eventually starts picking up other companies / ideas.

Heck plenty of start ups pivot to existing ideas.

And in Japan pay with your phone has been around for ages.

Facebook has been called 'the most Chinese' of the American software giants for a reason, the 'move fast and break things' attitude and the attitude towards privacy and capturing people's personal lives has been well documented for a long time.

> Isn't it strange that the Chinese copied facebook, but now facebook copys WeChat

You've clearly never used WeChat if you're under the impression they copied Facebook. This "___ of the West" is just a simplified trope to help readers make a comparison. Western companies/apps fail in the East and Eastern apps often fail in the West as the market is completely different that you can't just port something over and hope to replicate its success.

https://hbr.org/2018/08/why-western-digital-firms-have-faile...

facebook copied chinese / korean / japanese social media in many ways over the years. And their games ecosystem (zynga era) were mostly copies of chinese games.

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