WeChat to Many, But WeDoctor to Some

By Kim Bellard, September 23, 2020

You’ve probably heard about TikTok, especially lately. But you may have paid less attention to what’s been going on with WeChat, another China-based app. WeChat was part of the original proposed ban, which a federal judge blocked this weekend, hours before it was due to go into effect (the Commerce Department plans to appeal). The ban is on “transactions,” which, in WeChat’s case, covers a lot of ground.

WeChat is owned by Tencent Holdings, one of China’s internet giants. It has been described as a “Swiss Army knife” app, able to do many tasks — not just messaging and social networking, but also games, shopping, and payments.

It is also important to users’ health. WeChat is, according to CMI Media, “fast becoming the #1 online healthcare destination in China.” It offers, among other things, health content (some in partnership with U.S. firms), health products, telehealth, a network of “trusted” doctors, a form of health insurance, and WeDoctor. The latter “provides online health enquiry service, psychological support, prevention guidelines and real-time pandemic reports,” and is free to the user. It is available “24/7 for people all over the world.”

If we’re worried about what information China might glean from the video-watching habits of teenagers, think about how worried we should be about China having access to what health information users sought, what medical advice they got, and what health products they ordered.

China is famed for its “Great Firewall,” which restricts which outside internet platforms — like Google or Facebook — can be used within its borders. Equally important, the Chinese government monitors what happens on WeChat and other internet platforms/apps, and does not allow news or opinions it finds objectionable, or subversive.

There are estimated to be 19 million U.S. users, out of WeChat’s 1.2 billion users; most are people with family or friends in China, who rely on the app to stay in touch. The U.S. may argue it is worried about what financial and personal information might be going to the Chinese government, but it should be equally worried about what “information” is being served to U.S. users.

Think, for example, what it might tell U.S. users about COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. moves make some worry that we’re becoming more like China, leading to the “splinternet” where, as Vox explained, “your experience of the internet increasingly depends on where you live and the whims of the ruling parties there.”

It is the opposite of the open access, no borders version of the internet that most of us have believed in for the past thirty years. Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud-computing company Box Inc, warned in The Wall Street Journal: “U.S. tech companies have far more to lose if this becomes a precedent. This creates a Balkanization of the internet and the risk of breaking the power of the internet as one platform.”

Somehow, “optimal fragmentation” isn’t how I want to think of my internet experience; I suspect that fragmentation won’t be so optimal.

In discussing the effect of potential WeChat bans with The New York Times, Fang Kecheng, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said: “Information is like water. Water quality can be improved, but without any flow, water easily grows fetid.” He didn’t carry the analogy further, but I will: information is like water, in that, eventually, it will get to where it wants to go.

We don’t have a U.S. platform as versatile as WeChat; we don’t even have a health platform as capable as WeChat’s health capabilities. But, if we’re not careful, WeChat might become that platform.

This post is an abridged version of the original posting in Medium. Please follow Kim on Medium and on Twitter (@kimbbellard)