All too often, app-based platforms just make it easier for companies to skirt regulations and realize profits. In the US, where social welfare and public goods are, at best, neglected, there’s little reason to think the launch of super apps would go any differently. The sleek integration of various apps into a larger ecosystem may provide convenience, but these are still apps concerned with extracting as much as they can out of each one of us either by labor exploitation or endless commodification. This has led to the explosive growth of digital infrastructure focused largely on government and corporate surveillance, social control, and the creation of new markets. In China, Tencent’s WeChat started as an instant messaging chat but eventually grew to include food delivery, utility payments, social media, banking, urban transit, health care appointments, air travel, biometrics, news, and more. Looking overseas, it’s easy to see how super apps could give tech companies further grounds to take advantage of existing structural holes. And for consumers, one application with a core function brings together a diverse array of services such as calling a cab, investing money, or even making a quick buck. For some tech firms like Microsoft, super apps may provide an opportunity to break the hold of more established monopolies like Apple or Google. Still, if you ignore this reality, you can understand some of the super app hype. These processes and rationalizations often result in American technologies that can be deployed to augment racial discrimination, corporate and government surveillance, social control, worker immiseration, and above all else, profit maximization-an inconvenient fact that doesn’t matter until it does. And yet, each sermon by a patriotic tech executive preaching the gospel of techno-nationalism (we can’t trust anyone but ourselves to build X or Y tech), each blog post by a doe-eyed venture capitalist about the threats of “Chinese AI”, makes it that much easier to secure contracts with police departments and militaries and government agencies, to rationalize self-regulation here or abroad in the name of outpacing China, and to reframe the ongoing privatization of state infrastructure and public life with sleek, dynamic digitization. But the realities of our tech ecosystem-in which the largest players seem committed to surveillance, labor exploitation, weaponizing tech, algorithmic discrimination, and privatizing every part of the public sphere in the name of profit-indicate that a new super app might not be such a great idea.Īt the moment, the US tech sector is all too eager to play up fears about an impending Cold War 2.0 with China, and snuffing out the competition has long been one of Silicon Valley’s favorite plays. Recently, Elon Musk told X employees that he wants the platform to become a WeChat-style super app, a one-stop shop for social media, communication, travel, on-demand labor, payments, and more.
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