I’ve been living in China for some years, and you know what’s surprisingly not a terrible model for a social network? Wechat, if it were rebuilt by people who value freedom and privacy. Think of it like WhatsApp but with a feed — just enough social to help you stay connected with your IRL friends, without turning everything into political discussion.

(And yes, I realize that it’s partly the censorship here that steers people away from politics and keeps it social, but I don’t think that’s all of it)

I don’t see why a social network should also build in first class features for sharing and commenting on news. What’s the old adage about discussing politics and religion? Why should it even be POSSIBLE for me to argue with some nazi I don’t know in the comments section of an article my grandma shared with my uncle? Seriously, wtf?

If you want a site purpose-built for discussing news as it goes viral, Reddit is fine for that.

Interesting things about Wechat’s feed:

- It’s not what you see when you open the app. Instead, the app opens to your messages. This is huge.

- It’s strictly chronological. Yep.

- Each time I open it, the 5th post is always an ad, and it’s labeled as such.

- It’s trivially easy to restrict most people from seeing only the last week, or month, or six months of your posts. People you’re not friends with can’t see your posts BY DEFAULT.

- When your friends post, you can only see comments and likes from your own friends. (it's easier to notice unexpected connections, which could be an upside or a downside depending on your situation)

- If you want to re-share something, there’s no button for that: you have to open the page, copy the link, and post it again. This is obviously intended to make the censors’ jobs easier, but adding friction also cuts down on low effort sharing.

How it’s otherwise different from Facebook:

- There’s no such thing as viral posts. Sure, the same link might get shared in thousands of private groups, but the discussion isn’t shared. I think this is a feature, not a bug. Again, there are plenty of websites specifically for discussing news with strangers as it goes viral.

- It’s mobile-first (basically, mobile only). You can’t see the feed on PC, so if you want to write an angry tirade about f-ing Yankees fans on your friend’s post, you’re gonna get sore thumbs. Again, adding friction means less trash makes it on the network.

- Everyone has it hooked up to payment, so splitting the bill at the end of dinner is trivial. There’s even a feature for sending a bill to a group with N people that splits it N ways and shows who has and hasn’t paid.

- (Probably some other stuff, but I basically stopped using Facebook 7 years ago when I moved to China, partly because my parents and old friends are on there sharing news stories I'd rather not know their stance on)

Even aside from the censorship, Wechat isn’t perfect — its interface hasn’t changed in the 7 years I’ve been using it, so stupid stuff like pinning contacts or putting groups in a separate tab or even goddamn EVENTS aren’t things you can do in the app.

But as a social network, it’s got most of the value while being way less problematic than Facebook.