I have been on QQ Chinese social media for quite a number of years, and am now an administrator for a couple of QQ groups. Recently a couple of QQ groups have been able to use the Chatgpt API to connect with and allow Chinese group members to have a first-hand try at Chatgpt. Here are my observations.
QQ is one of China’s largest social media platform, where you can find friends, video chat, send pics and videos, participate in group chats, exchange money, listen to music, and more. The platform is less invasive than WeChat. Both are run by Tencent. I have become an administrator on a couple of English-only QQ groups.
I did not really think about the importance of searching the web. It seemed straight forward, just like a card catalogue library. You want something, there are available resources, you search those resources and find what you are looking for, or perhaps not. On Chinese social media there are a few other major issues to consider that, almost always, give you sub-optimal results.
Search Results are useful for China-internal content
There is Baidu search in China, their largest search engine. By all accounts this search engine is quite bad, where people in China often cannot find what they are looking for. Baidu is invariably only roughly effective in China, even though they have huge bots that scour the world’s web. I know this because I see it hitting my web sites on a daily basis.
This image was banned on 2 QQ (Chinese) social media forums. This is a label from a carton of 30 Burnbrae large eggs, made in the USA. Photo 1 by Don Tai
I do not intend to be subversive on Chinese social media, nor very political. I also do stay away from sensitive issues on QQ, a Chinese social media messaging and forum site. This image ban, however, really took me by surprise. I teach some English on the Chinese forums, so I thought I’d show them a typical Canadian product label in English and French. I tried 3 times, and the QQ bot banned me all three times from posting to 2 separate QQ forums. Very odd.
Chocolate emoji: I could not find an appropriate chocolate emoji for QQ, so I shrunk a larger image down to 32×32 saved in png format, transparent background, and imported it into QQ. Original large image.
I’m on QQ, Chinese social media and messenger, and wanted a different emoji that I could not find. Here’s how I added one.
You’ll need to edit your original graphic. The file format size is 32×32. Save your file in .png so you can have a transparent background. You can reduce the size of the image of your choice, but the simpler the better, as at 32 x 32 px almost all details will be lost. I have sized existing QQ emojis and they are 28x28px or smaller. This is a more appropriate size.
If you are using QQ, the Chinese social media platform, on a PC and want multi-language capability, or at least a language other than Chinese, your days are numbered. The PC program was last updated in 2014 and has been slowly degrading in functionality. There is no foreseeable new version planned. The best you can do is to learn more Chinese and install the Chinese version, or use the Android international version on an Andriod smartphone.
I am a QQ user, which is part of Chinese social media. From Tencent 腾讯 in China, QQ is a simpler messaging and social media ecosystem than WeChat 微信. In the past couple of months I have been noticing more content is blocked to me here in Canada. More concerning is that China is beginning to use new protocols on the internet that are unique to China.
Geoblocking is regularly used by Chinese stores. I search for their products on Baidu, find images but cannot go to their web pages because they detect that I am not in China and block me. While this is annoying, at least I can understand the technical mechanism. They do not want Western eyes looking at their web pages, and that is their prorogative.
Chinese QQ QZone’s photo image display javascript gets in the way of saving large images
On Chinese QQ QZone people have walls similar to FB. QZone uses an image display script in your browser. If the image is large when you right click and you can save the image as .PSB or .JPG, but it will not render in your browser, as .PSB is an unknown file type. I believe QQ’s javascript manipulated the image so you can zoom and move around, but this gets in the way if you want to see the original pic and zoom for yourself.
I use the QQ messenger program from Tencent in China. While its big brother WeChat has a very broad ecosystem, QQ is much smaller and has limited function. As I wish to limit such a program to only messaging people in China, QQ fits the bill for me. Both QQ and Wechat are standalone programs that can run on Windows, Mac or Android. There is no version for Linux.
Both QQ and WeChat have a huge following in China. QQ has 805.5 million users, while WeChat has 1,040 million monthly active users (MAU). As of the second quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users [worldwide].
It looks like Tencent’s QQ International version will be ceasing operations in Europe, effective 2018 May 20. I am unsure why. I also do not know if this affects WeChat. Perhaps this is about Europe’s new privacy laws, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)? I need to do more research. This is from a friend in China. it does look like Tencent’s QQ and Wechat will be pulled from the EU market.
We are sorry to announce that for operational needs from 20 May 2018 QQi will no longer be available in Europe.
Every tool used by humans can be used for good or evil. It is up to the individual to determine its use. Smartphones are some of the newer tools for modern living. Their longer-term implications for everyday use are as yet unknown. While we in the West, where I see this in Canada, take steps to preserve privacy, this is untrue in China. The Chinese government has turned the benign too of the smartphone into a personal tracking device for its own political purposes.
