In one particular late September video that I located specifically insightful, a particular person who seems to be a WeChat employee can be heard instructing men and women to place their hands in front of a recognition device and record their palm prints. “New feature of WeChat Pay. Everyone is welcome to try our service and support us,” the voice says. In return, the customers who scan their palms can get a soda for the price tag of one particular cent.
The user who later uploaded the video asks when this function was released, and the voice replies that it began half a year ago but only lately came to Guangzhou.
The payment devices in these videos are iPad-size white boxes with one particular screen displaying guidelines and a camera capturing the palm information. It’s unclear irrespective of whether they are meant only for testing the functionality of palm-print recognition technologies or for collecting extra information to enable fine-tune it (or each). None of the relevant videos indicate that prospects are becoming told how their information will be employed. I asked Tencent for a comment but I haven’t heard back.
No matter their precise use, the devices are most likely nonetheless in the trial phase, as they are normally shown alongside a note saying “Trial location for WeChat palm-print scan payment” or “Internal testing. Please don’t tell external people.” In one particular photo posted on the net, a written warning states that photography of the device is prohibited.
(Lol, this clearly didn’t cease men and women from taking pictures. And videos. And uploading them to the world-wide-web.)
This reporting encounter reaffirms an thought I’ve had for a extended time: It’s really hard to know what’s taking place in China from the outdoors, each since of the highly effective censorship machine and since of the border policies that make going to China challenging. Yet Chinese video platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou—which are replacing classic internet sites like Weibo to turn into the spot exactly where men and women express themselves and document their lives—can give extra insight than ever. Since the content material of videos is much less search-friendly than texts, they are tougher to sort via, but they also normally pack extra facts into just a couple of seconds.
Obviously, there’s considerably extra to the story of palm-print recognition than this preview. Why is the technologies possessing a moment now, following facial recognition has thrived for years? How has the pandemic, which produced face masks widespread, changed its course of improvement? How could the rising awareness of information privacy enable or hurt the prospect of palm-print recognition? There are several extra intriguing discussions to be had about the technological and ethical elements of the technologies, and I’ll address them in the complete story that we’ll publish quickly. I’ll be confident to hyperlink in the subsequent newsletter.
Until then! I’ll see you once more subsequent week (or possibly in particular person this week!).
