Chinese app design: weird, but it works [video]

she is parroting an older paper from Romeo et al, which imo did a very bad job of playing anthropologist.

they completely ignore monopolist user abuse and commercial interests.

for example, it's harder to extract links and info from wechat's tiktok clone than it's in Instagram. either the wechat in-apps can do what you want or you don't do it!

it's all about lock in, control and reducing options. the paper (and video) conclusion that you are "taken care of" because the app does everything is just bonkers.

about the payment, you see that in Latin America too. "instant digital payments". what the paper (and video) forget to mention is that the purchases entire data goes straight to the central bank. there are zero privacy safeguard in the legislation of china, India, Brazil. my bet is that this data will be used for a gerrymandering 2.0 like we can't even imagine in future elections.