On February 8, 2020, I was forced to abandon my WeChat account that I had been using for ten years. In the past month, I have significantly reduced my usage of WeChat and have recorded the changes in my mindset and some thoughts.
The Incident#
On February 8, at noon, I was having a WeChat voice meeting with my colleagues when a dialogue box suddenly popped up, notifying me that my WeChat account had been forcefully logged out. (The timing was perfect, 404, haha)
I couldn't help but exclaim, "What the f***," and tried to log in again with my password. However, I saw a prompt saying, "Permanently banned, cannot be unblocked."
I forced myself to calm down and finished the meeting using QQ voice.
I had heard before that WeChat accounts could be permanently banned, but I never thought it would happen to me. In fact, not long ago, I had just organized my contacts, with over 1800 friends, and I had labeled each one, which took a whole 6 hours.
PS: WeChat's contact and labeling functions are really difficult to use.
PPS: I never grouped my friends when posting on Moments, I only labeled them for convenience in finding people.
I felt extremely devastated because I didn't know the consequences of being banned, such as whether I could recover my account, export my data, or add back my friends.
1 Hour Later#
I Googled a bunch of information and came to the following conclusions after reading:
- It is indeed permanently banned, my old account is useless, so I need to prepare a new one.
- Since there was still balance in my wallet, I could temporarily log in and retrieve my friends.
At the same time, a friend helped me find a friend who works at WeChat, promising to help me look into it.
In addition, I had to continue working, so I had to use the WeChat account I had registered for my family's dog, not knowing if my colleagues would find it strange to see a dog's profile picture...
2 Hours Later#
I received feedback from my friend that my WeChat account was indeed irretrievable and had been banned by the higher-ups.
I couldn't believe it. How could my personal account of ten years be banned? However, my friend from WeChat explained that the decision had been made after careful consideration, so I recited a couple of lines from a poem:
We were once from the same root, why rush to destroy each other?
The First Few Days#
After having a satisfying meal that night, I accepted the reality and registered a new WeChat account.
I informed a few friends of my new WeChat account through Instagram, iMessage, and other channels, and they helped spread the word. Many friends added me back.
This process was actually quite fun. Everyone would jokingly say to me, "Hahaha, did your WeChat get blown up? My condolences, hahaha." Some friends I hadn't contacted in a long time even chatted with me again. It was like when you fell and got injured as a child, and everyone came to see you. They saw that you were fine, so they naturally started teasing you, saying, "Hahaha, you idiot."
I also felt like an idiot. Facepalm.jpg
But the new WeChat account encountered some obstacles. First, because I added too many people in a short period of time, my friends received a prompt saying, "Be careful, the other person might be a scammer." So, I started using secret codes with newly added old friends, which was also quite fun.
Then, I re-followed Huang Zheng's WeChat official account, only to be accused of artificially inflating the reading count and got banned again. Sigh, does Huang Zheng's highly informative official account really need to buy followers?
One Week Later#
I used technical means to export a list of my old WeChat account's friends and planned to start adding them back from A to Z.
However, I fell into procrastination at this point, and I still haven't overcome it to this day.
On one hand, there is a limit to how many people I can add with the new account, and I'm not sure what the threshold is, so I'm being cautious.
On the other hand, there is psychological procrastination. In fact, I have a long history of battling procrastination, and through this process, I realized a truth:
If I keep procrastinating on something, it's because I haven't thought it through—either I haven't thought through the benefits of doing this thing, or there are potential risks that make me resist it.
This is definitely a wise saying, my friends. Think about it: if something has clear benefits, would you not do it? Or, if you realize the benefits of doing something but you're not clear about the execution path, causing you to have no clear expectations of the workload, this vague workload will be like a mountain in the dark night, giving you immense pressure and making you unable to move forward.
So why am I procrastinating on adding friends back? It's because I realized something:
This WeChat account doesn't really belong to me.
Yes, even though I registered the WeChat account, linked it to my phone number and bank card, and set a unique password, it doesn't really belong to me. It can be taken away at any time because of a chat, a post on Moments, or even joining a group where I never spoke.
And emotionally, this account is very different from my old account. My old account had all the chat records from ten years, the first post on Moments in 2013, and all the interactions with my friends until now. The new account has nothing, and I just can't feel close to it.
How can I invest my time and energy in a WeChat account that doesn't belong to me?
Resisting starting a new life because of too many ties to the past, doesn't this incident resemble love?
New Discoveries#
So, I still haven't opened the spreadsheet full of friends because I haven't thought it through. I haven't thought through whether I should use my current new account or the GDPR-compliant new account, and both of them need to be maintained for a while.
And there are many things happening in work and life, leaving me with little free time, so I continue to put it off.
But I did something else—I created my own independent blog: (which is this blog)
anemoi's Wind Radio https://anemoi.xyzAlready migrated to this site
An independent domain, support for RSS subscriptions, and even a favicon! (I used Sketch to create some shapes and XJB drew them)
Feel free to subscribe, as all my articles will be published on my blog first, with the WeChat official account being delayed by a day (or possibly much longer).
This website is completely mine, without using any services within the Great Firewall, so there is no censorship, article deletion, or account banning.
If any friends are interested in creating their own independent blog, leave a comment, and I can write a tutorial.
Reflections#
Being banned and the past month have led me to some reflections.
The Relationship Between People and Tools#
People create tools, and tools, in turn, shape people.
During this month of partially detaching from WeChat, I actually felt great: I was no longer interrupted by short messages, no longer read fragmented articles on public accounts, and it seemed like there weren't as many group chats to participate in.
My time became more complete, with more uninterrupted time, allowing for more thinking, and deeper thinking.
Nowadays, phones can show the number of times an app is launched and the time spent on it. If you look at the time you spend on WeChat, you will definitely be shocked.
Human Social Relationships#
Marx wrote: "The essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social relations."
To be fair, WeChat has done a great job in maximizing human social relationships, allowing everyone to easily share everything through WeChat.
But on the flip side, when all your social relationships are within the product of a commercial company and that company never provides clear rules (such as how many friends you can add in a day before being banned), not to mention that the company also has an even more unclear higher authority.
Doesn't it feel a bit like Leviathan?
My response is to start building my own Personal CRM system, specifically a contact database that supports various labels, rollups, and relations, storing friends' WeChat IDs, phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information to prevent losing touch.
I even have the idea of turning it into a product, like a mini-program. Would anyone use it?
Do I Really Need a GDPR WeChat?#
What difference does it make to have a WeChat account that complies with GDPR? There is still a possibility of being banned.
This is not fundamentally WeChat's problem, but rather the construction of the public opinion environment and the legal system in society.
Am I Really an Idiot?#
Later on, I saw many people getting their accounts banned on February 8, and I roughly understood the reason for the ban.
Am I an idiot? Am I to blame for not remaining silent about what happened to a fellow countryman, which led to my WeChat account being banned? And after my account was banned, it caused great inconvenience for me, with the cost entirely borne by myself. But if we all remain silent, how can things get better?
You might say, "Look, it's been a month, and everyone has forgotten about it. Your speaking out didn't make things better, and your account got banned for nothing."
Did it get banned for nothing? Maybe.
"I have seen the sea, I can't pretend I haven't."
Finally#
Please wait for me to build up my new WeChat account and slowly add back my friends. Don't worry...
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2020/02/03 @Beijing