The terrible part of the WeChat's world is quite simple, it's a very private network piggybacked on the open internet. Even worse, unlike facebook, it's poorly moderated in the 'Chinese Way'. As for privacy/security concerns, WeChat is doing better than most of its counterparts in China, and let's just limit our scope in China.<p>The domestic criticizes about WeChat is mainly in these aspects:
1. Using WeChat for Work, I have ZERO idea why people just did this, but even in my workplace, it's a common practice. It sounds unprofessional and risky to use an external tool for work purposes.<p>2. Lack of Openness, the only successful crawler works with WeChat is Sogou's search engine. Indexability is just the beginning of the issue.<p>3. Lazy moderation, rumor, pseudoscience, (domestic) copyright infringement articles are just everywhere and non-stoppable. WeChat officials said to put some force to stop these, but their 'official account hasn't been updated for ages. Maybe it's just what 'Chinternet' is like.<p>4. WeChat is a network of people you known in the 'outside world', friends/family/co-workers, this part just as bad as facebook.<p>There's also an awesome part about WeChat, the payment. WeChat got into payment business not long ago in a traditional measurement of time. A few years later, can you imagine that you can buy vegetables with WeChat/AliPay? Back in my college days (2009), it was a Country where only some decent restaurants, chain markets accept debit/credit cards. WeChat is accepted everywhere now, only and offline.<p>Speak of payments, there's one thing to add, you can check out how Alipay, a payment app, like PayPal are so much into communication business that flooded its app with all the SNS crap, even made friend suggestions based on who you had transactions with. I uninstalled the app immediately after they demonstrated their determination in the social network business, creepy.<p>Not only WeChat is the only choice of social network on the go, but also it's a quite predictable software, more decent than most of its competitors. So I think this is more than just the "Convenience weighs more than risk mgmt" scenario, more likely something weighs more than 'Der Freiheit'.