Bullying us secretly? This WeChat update is very unethical

Not long ago, WeChat finally updated its own emoticon package.

Brought us 6 new emoji expressions such as "Let me see".

All of a sudden, everyone started playing with these new emoticons.

It’s even better than WeChat releasing a new feature…

But, I noticed that no one noticed that many of WeChat’s built-in emoticons were also removed from the shelves!

For example, the following five yellow face emojis have been around since the Tencent QQ era more than a decade ago:

To be honest, the fourth "so embarrassing" emoticon above was used frequently by Brother Ji in the past. I didn't expect that it would be removed from the shelves without any warning after more than ten years.

There are also the following 11 emoticons from Tencent Penguin’s “ancient times”.

All of the above are memories of those born in the 80s and 90s.

Of course, WeChat also showed some mercy, and the most used “发震” was retained!

Brother Ji was so scared that he let out a long sigh.

In addition to these emoticons left over from the QQ era, WeChat had launched corresponding zodiac emoticons during the Spring Festival in previous years, such as chicken and dog, but they were also removed this time.

Well, after confirming with his eyes, he is undoubtedly a scumbag, and I will throw him away after using him.

However, Brother Ji heard his eighth brother complain:

• If you hadn't reminded me, I wouldn't have known that these emoticons on WeChat had been removed...

In other words, the emoticons that WeChat has cut this time are basically some unpopular and outdated emoticons.

Expressions like "smile", "snicker", and "grin" which are fake but still used by many people will continue to be retained.

Since not many people use it, it makes sense to clean it up early to make some space for new emoticons.

However, WeChat has done this kind of operation of quietly removing a function many times in its history.

I will list a few of the features that WeChat once had but were later quietly removed. Let’s see if you still remember them.

Airplane shooting game

If you are a little older, you may still remember that WeChat was still designed in a skeuomorphic style in the "ancient times", there was no WeChat payment at that time, and there was no mini-program at that time...

But WeChat, which seems to have such simple functions, has a built-in small game:

Shooting planes (aircraft battle)

Don't get the wrong idea, Brother Ji is driving a regular car today, and this plane shooting game is a real plane shooting game:

Perhaps it is hard for you to imagine that such a well-made and free game is actually built into the WeChat App produced by Tencent.

It was launched in 2013 along with WeChat 5.0.

Even if you install WeChat for the first time, the startup page does not introduce what WeChat is for, but instead lets you play a plane shooting game right away.

In addition, rankings, friend interactions, etc. were already implemented at that time, which was almost the prototype of the later WeChat game system~

Brother Ji feels that the popularity of masturbation at that time was no less than that of jumping and pinball later.

But, in the current WeChat App, this built-in mini-game has disappeared.

Even I can’t remember from which version WeChat quietly removed the airplane shooting function.

Maybe WeChat always likes to do this, removing a function without saying anything.

However, you can also say that the emoticons and mini-games were removed from the shelves because there were few users.

But it is unbelievable that WeChat cut off the two very practical functions that Brother Ji mentioned next.

Chat records are kept in the cloud for 7 days

Yes, we are complaining every day: Why doesn't WeChat have a function to save chat history in the cloud?

Maybe we are really too yonug...

In fact, WeChat had already achieved this many years ago: uploading chat records and saving them in the cloud for 7 days, but later it was cut off.

If we search now, we can still find posts where many people complained about this feature being removed from the shelves in 2015.

Of course, this function is a little different from what we understand as “auto save”.

Because it requires us to manually click "Backup", and then manually select when restoring, and the most important thing is that it can only be retained for 7 days.

But to be honest, it is better to have this function than not. After all, special situations such as losing your phone or system crashing, although they rarely happen, once they happen, it will almost completely ruin your mentality.

I don’t really understand why WeChat cut off such a necessary function…

In addition, there is another very practical function that many iPhone users still miss every day:

CallKit incoming call reminder

This feature is exclusive to the iOS version of WeChat because it requires calling a CallKit interface that Apple made for the iPhone.

Let me ask you first, how many steps are there in total when we answer a WeChat voice chat from someone else?

First you have to unlock your phone, then open the WeChat App, and finally press the answer button.

But, with the support of CallKit, answering WeChat voice chats is as convenient as answering ordinary calls.

Even if the phone is in the off state, an interface like an incoming call will pop up:

With just a swipe, Brother Ji can answer the voice chat from his younger brother on WeChat.

But! This useful feature has only gone through two versions: WeChat 6.6.0 and 6.6.1.

Then, WeChat chopped it off with a machete, and it has not been restored to this day.

In addition to the above, there was also the "WeChat Drift Bottle Removal Incident" that caused a sensation in 2018. My friends should all know the cause and effect. I even wrote an article about it at that time.

The gameplay of Drift Bottle is very simple. User A writes a sentence and throws it into the database. After a while, user B may get bored and pick one up to read.

In fact, it is equivalent to telling your own thoughts to a stranger in some corner of the world~

However, at the end of 2018, many users revealed that there was a lot of pornographic content in the message in the bottle.

In the end, the message in a bottle feature was completely removed from the shelves.

If we go to the "Discover" page or the settings page now, we can no longer see the message in a bottle.

At this point, the "drift bottle" function, which extended from QQ mailbox to WeChat, has gradually disappeared from our sight.

Today, Brother Ji reviewed a lot of features that WeChat had in the past and later removed.

They may be outdated, no one uses them, or they may have gone bad, or there may even be reasons that we cannot guess...

Brother Ji thinks that it is normal for an App to make adjustments as time, social environment, and user habits change.

But sometimes, when I see some very useful functions being cut off, I still feel like I have a "myocardial infarction".

The functions mentioned above will not be the first batch, nor will they be the last. This year, some practical functions such as the emoji package for commenting on Moments and the floating window of iOS applets were also removed.

In my opinion, it is a good thing to be brave enough to continuously optimize the App experience, but it is not necessarily a bad thing to listen more to users' opinions.