While the rest of the world tries to “kill email,” in China, it’s always been dead

Evening read >> :-)

Would be interesting to see how other Continents such as India, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia handle email vs chat, but yes mobile internet seems by far the most used ..

I must admit I'm kind of concerned about this. It was lucky happenstance that email is decentralized, federated. If some proprietary chat program were to become the new method of communication everyone has to have (as is the case already in China), we (the libre software community) would simply be cut off from the rest of the world. Heck, that's already happened to an extent with things like social networks. But it could be even worse. Right now it's contained to social interaction; it hasn't penetrated business.

Dealing with network effects is certainly difficult. I don't even know where to begin.

People talking ALL the time with even worse grammar?
Like we don't have enough useless conversations already in the workplace (not even counting meetings)?

All that because people have e-mail anxiety and let their mailbox be full? As if having millions of ongoing conversations is a solution...

How is it an improvement?
The only winner here is the app owner (and whoever buys the data gathered).
Only in this regard it is an "innovation", capable of beating all the other GAFAM.