Behind the WeChat outage response: pretentious texts, powerless users

WeChat had a malfunction yesterday afternoon, and users were unable to forward messages. At around 4:30 p.m., users began to complain. About 1.5 hours later, WeChat responded with some humorous words.

The official response to the outage on August 19 last year was delayed by only 15 minutes. The official response to the outage on July 22 last year was delayed by 3 hours.

Even a 15-minute delay is not good enough for a platform with 438 million active users (official data as of the end of Q2). You know, by this time, most international news agencies have already responded twice, haha.

If it involves public events on WeChat itself, then WeChat’s official public opinion monitoring and response are really poor.

Compared with Sina Weibo, WeChat has stronger circle attributes. However, its semi-closed nature makes it less able to spread public events and emergencies. Sina Weibo's rise was due to the spread of public events, especially the Wenzhou train accident.

Although there were three outages in two years, there was no real harm, but if WeChat was infiltrated and hijacked by some potential risk factors through technical means, the official response should be said to be unsatisfactory. WeChat has now embarked on the commercialization process, involving Internet finance, and the risk effect may be magnified in the future.

At least on the surface, we have not felt that WeChat has taken this issue seriously. Its response time is delayed, and what is more interesting is that its response wording really reveals a kind of pretentious temperament.

If you combine the analysis with the risk terms of WeChat, perhaps you can understand the origin of this temperament: the rights and interests basically belong to it, the risks are all borne by the users, and if something goes wrong, there is nothing to worry about.

Fault response: Pretentious text

Let's take a look at three failures and official response texts over the past year.

1. The first time. Three hours after WeChat was down, the Tencent WeChat team issued an announcement at 9:30 a.m. on the same day: "Due to a basic network failure on the server, your WeChat may temporarily experience problems sending and receiving. We are working hard to restore it, please be patient."

The word "working hard" shows that it is working very hard. However, it was three hours later before a basic response was issued, which shows that WeChat's official public communication is not yet systematic. 2013 was the period of explosive growth of WeChat, so it would be impossible not to work hard. This word also reveals a kind of complacency. After all, they are from a big company.

Although the term "xiaozhu" has lagged behind the TV drama's hit broadcast period by one year, the poster is obviously still nostalgic for it. Considering that the post-90s generation is quick to accept new things and also quick to reject them, the poster should be older. WeChat's manipulation of language often carries a contrast of status.

Afterwards, officials confirmed that the optical cable was dug up by the Shanghai municipal government, which affected Tencent's computer room in Zhoupu, Pudong New District, Shanghai, and caused service interruption.

2. On August 19 last year, the public first reported the incident at around 22:40, and the official responded within minutes, but initially gave a reason. It was later confirmed that the network equipment in the computer room had failed and was being urgently repaired.

There was no humor this time.

3. This time it was very humorous, and seemed to be trying to ease the atmosphere: "At 16:50 today, WeChat Shanghai data center twitched, and a small number of users were unable to log in and send and receive messages normally. (Special statement: Excavator is not responsible for this accident). At present, the siege division is working hard to repair it. If there is further information, we will update it at any time. Sorry, everyone, hurry up and get to work!"

Humor aside, no reason was given. What was the "twitching" in the Shanghai computer room? There was no more specific information. "Special statement: the excavator is not responsible for this accident" is just redundant and useless. It doesn't matter if "engineer" becomes "siege engineer". The word "playing with life" appears again, indicating that the poster is likely to be the same young man as last year. Unfortunately, this reaction was 1.5 hours after the public's reaction.

You can see that the WeChat team wants to convey that it is working hard to fix the problem. The sentence "I'm sorry, everyone, I'm going to work quickly" shows that it is in a hurry. However, redundant or unclear expressions, such as "twitching" and "(Special statement: the excavator is not responsible for this accident)", show that the poster is in a very casual state of mind, which contradicts the sentence "I'm going to work quickly".

Three failures, three different response speeds, and three different official tones. There must be differences in the risks of failures.

This was the first time that we had encountered such a large-scale failure, involving more than 20 provinces and cities. We were very passive. However, we were also very proud. After all, the number of users was skyrocketing, and we couldn't hold back.

The second time, the risk was probably moderate and easy to resolve, so the tone of expression was mild and lacked emotion.

The third time, there was probably a certain risk, as the fault was still unclear. So he had to go around in circles. The word "twitch" made you guess, "siege division" was deliberately misspelled, and it seemed to be done in a hurry, while "excavator" showed a kind of redundant information. Words like "playing with life" no longer made any sense after the second time they were used. If he used them again in the future, he would probably vomit.

In the WeChat world, you have no rights

Three risks in two years may not seem like a big deal. Although WeChat is rapidly commercializing, it is also very good at risk avoidance. If you read WeChat's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy carefully, you will find that it owns all the rights and users should bear all the risks. For example:

1. Any high-sounding content you write and any service you provide can be deleted at any time without any notice. Look at this one: "Tencent reserves the right to unilaterally change, suspend, restrict, terminate or revoke the Tencent WeChat service in whole or in part at any time without any notice due to business development needs. Users shall bear this risk.

Remember last year, a group of powerful accounts disappeared overnight? Of course, those accounts were too free, and the things they spread were a bit scary.

2. Similar to the three failures mentioned above, if the user suffers losses, Ma Huateng will not compensate you a penny.

Look at this one: "Tencent and its partners are not responsible for any losses suffered by users due to communication line failures, technical problems, network and computer failures, system instability and other force majeure caused by third parties such as telecommunications departments." Look at this additional one: "When using this software and services, users must bear the following risks that are beyond Tencent's control, including but not limited to... risks such as Tencent WeChat login failures, incomplete data synchronization, slow page opening speeds, etc. caused by unstable wireless network information and low wireless network bandwidth."

Let me add another disclaimer from Tencent: "This service is subject to the risk of service interruption or failure to meet user requirements due to force majeure, computer viruses or hacker attacks, system instability, user location, user shutdown, and any other technical, Internet, or communication line reasons. Users must bear the above risks, and Tencent does not provide any guarantees. Tencent does not assume any responsibility for users' inability to send and receive information, or for sending or receiving wrong information.

3. Your account was stolen, it has nothing to do with Ma Huateng. Please read this Tencent disclaimer: "If others use the user's information to cause harassment in real life..."

4. The only way you can be free is to listen to Tencent and accept its advertisements and commercial services. You cannot change the advertisements at will. Look at this: "The company defines information content as including: text, software, sound, photos, videos, graphics; all content in advertisements; commercial information provided by Tencent to users. All these contents are protected by copyright, trademark rights, and other intellectual property and ownership laws. Therefore, users can only use these contents with the authorization of Tencent and advertisers, and cannot copy, modify, compile these contents without authorization, or create derivative products related to the contents.

Now, WeChat has introduced many merchants, many service accounts have payment functions, and sending red envelopes is everywhere. If this process is hijacked by technology, according to the WeChat framework disclaimer, Ma Huateng may also be a hands-off boss.

This means that in the world of power in WeChat, Tencent's rights and interests belong to Tencent, and the rights and interests of users also belong to Tencent. As for the risks, they belong to the users. If the WeChat team's response text to the fault is based on this kind of thinking, I think it can really be installed. I guess next time, it will be more humorous, and it will be "working hard to repair" again.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.