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Comment by helen___keller | Hacker News Reader

Putting aside the politics of it all, crappy day to be a part of the Chinese American community with friends and family overseas.

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If you were planning to get a new phone in the next year, buy it today while you can still install WeChat. On that note, off to the Apple Store...

EDIT: I wonder if we'll be able to get around these restrictions while traveling -- Visit Canada for a weekend, download WeChat, and come home? Android users can just sideload apps in any case.

This seems like an underappreciated point, some of my coworkers have mentioned how much it sucks to have their main method of contact with family back in China stripped from them.

So long as they don't get a new iPhone, WeChat and TikTok are likely to continue functioning. They won't be able to be downloaded/updated from a US app store though.

This order does seem to prohibit any [US] business from accepting WeChat pay or otherwise using WeChat for their services.

Can't you still communicate with Whatsapp, Telegram or the myriad of other communication platforms?

Chinese people use WeChat pretty much exclusively. If you want to talk to someone there, it's WeChat or nothing. You can still make phone calls, but that's not how most people communicate these days.

Whatsapp is banned in China. I'm guessing Telegram is too. Facebook, Google hangouts, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram all are too, blocked at the ISP level.

If you want to talk to someone in Mainland China, your option is pretty much only WeChat

Perhaps those apps can be unbanned in China to prevent all the inconvenience created by the WeChat ban in the US. I understand all those apps don't have the same set of features (payment, news, etc) but should suffice for basic communication needs, and I'm sure that's what is most important to friends and family abroad.

Well obviously that will never happen. It just sucks for those of us with friends in China where all we want to do is keep in contact. I blame China more than the US but this whole fight for control over communication platforms is so annoying and leaves most of us helpless.

That seems very unfortunate... I can't imagine what it must feel like to be technically cutoff from friends and family in the digital age.

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