1w ago

Wait I'm confused I was told that it was China that's stealing US tech? 🤔

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/why-us-companies-struggle-to-replicate-chinas-wechat-super-app-.html

42 comments

I really wish I could find the video for it, but:
Bill Hicks on the theft of his material by Denis Leary: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act...I camouflaged it with punchlines. And to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”
- Bill was great, RIP.

there's 18 super apps... we should conglomerate them all into one app and sweep the market.
there's 19 super apps...

We already have super apps, they're called Android and iOS.
Countries developed super app ecosystems because poorly localized software meant you can't just install whatever you want off the app store and expect it to be in a language you know, able to work with your phone carrier, and able to work with your payment provider.
- It’s about integration, the amount of actions it takes to do something in a single app is vastly reduced compared to having to juggle multiple apps. For example, you want to go out for food with your friends. With WeChat, you can message your friends, find a restaurant on the map, book it, etc. all completely seamlessly. This is a really good video explaining the benefits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA
  
  WeChat is the equivalent of emacs. I think people underestimate the advantages of super apps and their greater seamlessness compared to multiple disparate apps (which (often, but not always) give a disconnected, heteronormative, clunky experience) in an operating system.
  This video/text (also this video/text) explains about emacs's advantages of integration and how it improves users' tech sovereignty/autonomy well. WeChat and emacs have sums that are greater than their parts, and their gestalt form provide a more optimal experience than most gestalt forms of separate and disparate apps that don't share a common language to communicate to each other.
  As you mentioned in another comment in this thread, an operating system can fulfill this role, too. Linux and GNU coreutils, for example, can provide a similar experience to emacs as they are developed in a more homogeneous and cohesive manner and they use Linux as an integrated, uniform workspace, calling on APIs of the same "language".
  Apps developed in privatized settings tend to venture off and create their own UIs and APIs that don't work optimally with other private apps. Optimal experiences that WeChat, emacs, Linux, BSD, and the like create result from a collective effort where developers cooperate together and develop a cohesive environment. This is why a socialist society and governments in general create the wonders and innovations of civilization, whereas private companies simply piggyback off of those innovations which make their own products possible in the first place.
  
  They're basically multiple apps built in to one. I don't see how there would be an experience difference between going to your home's phone screen to open a different app vs going to the super-app's home screen to open a different sub-app.
  Like it's literally just replicating the functionality of the phone's OS but in a single app. The only possible difference I can see is that the sub-apps are more tightly integrated with one another, but the same is basically true for apps from the phone/OS maker (I'm mainly thinking Apple here since that's what I have, but I'm sure Android has similar with its built-in apps).
  The "4 apps" example is pretty wrong. You can pay someone directly in the iMessage app with Apple Pay, then order from whatever other app (also paying using Apple Pay). They included "your mobile wallet needs to be updated" as if that's something you have to do every day just to pad the number of apps. In reality it's two apps, iMessage and the food ordering app. In WeChat it's probably the same, the messaging sub-app which probably also has the ability to pay someone directly, and the food ordering sub-app. (Although in both situations it would be more efficient for the boss to make the order and just have you pick it up.)
  Apple Maps (and I'm sure Google Maps too) also has the ability to compare prices among ride share apps and go directly to the book screen of those apps like she said for Gaode Maps. It can also take you to a restaurant's page on a food delivery app.
  Also, what she says at 3:03 is a pretty bad thing. In the US in most places you can pay with cash, card, and your phone's built in tap to pay. Everywhere else is just cash and card because they haven't modernized (or just cash because they're stingy about paying card processing fees). Being able to pay with cash anywhere is pretty important imo for multiple reasons, privacy being a big one.
  
  I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

The joke is this 'super app' would require SV companies cooperating

Wow, a “one app for everything” model, how horribly inconvenient and obnoxious!

I would much rather download multiple apps on my phone, each from a tech company that has a monopoly on their pertinent share of the market. Although this may be inconvenient to some who have a disdain for American freedom and enterprise, I will not be shaken by CCP propaganda or anything that might shake the country I hold dear!!!! #RESIST #HARRIS2028
- libs were trying to tell me exactly this completely unironically here https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6805581
  
  Damn lemmy is a completely different world sometimes lol
- Not sure what's the point here, do you prefer to have one private company providing you everything over multiple companies?
  The name "super app" alone terrifies me. I'm explicitly avoiding apps from private companies that are not privacy friendly, so I really don't get why I would like something like wechat.
  
  the CIA already controls everything. all you're getting is illusion of privacy

X WeChat, the everything app
- Owned by Tencent, the most successful company in the world that enshittifies everything it touches.
  
  Not at all. People were happy with how they were hands off with path of exile

I don't believe that super apps are inherently good, especially mobile ones. Why does your payment app also need to message, view maps, book doctor appoinments, order stuff online and more? Who cares if another app opens when you click on a google maps link. Pressing the back button will bring you back to the messenger app, or to the messenger 'window' in the super app. So no real changes, but the super apps tend to have clustered UIs

I would be joyous if the US is forced to accept losing its power as the world hegemon and has to be helped with reindustrializing itself by China's aid and to use their apps. I seriously doubt this is how events will play out, and I believe the future will be messy, but it would be nice and satisfying punch to the ruling class and tech oligarchs/chuds' comically large ego.

In a socialist society perhaps this would be less of a concern, but my main gripe with this type of approach is the centralization of data and the havoc it would wreak on digital privacy. As it stands, I can compartmentalize what companies have access to this information or that information, and have exceptions in my security modeling for specific services. If one company has a data breach, that’s more tolerable because they have the minimal amount of data necessary on me and I gave them a unique email and password. If all my apps were combined, then I’m at the mercy of one company to maintain my security, and if there’s a leak then everything is compromised. Additionally, I pick and choose who I trust and what data is exposed to which parties under the individual app per service model. With a super app, if they are spying on metadata or god forbid not using encryption and just reading my messages etc, then they have all of it and I have no protection
- I don't think the idea has to be implemented in this way though. The key difference in my mind is that instead of having each app be its own isolated thing, you treat them more as services with APIs. One way this can be handled at the UI toolkit in the OS that could generate a something like a JSON API for each app based on the UI to query the app. This way apps could be trivially composed into custom UIs and workflows, or even scripted. This would follow the whole Unix philosophy where you have a bunch of utils that can be piped together to produce whatever functionality you need.