how to fix the failour of downloading pictures on my wechat ?

July 22, 2014 10:21 PM

I am in China and my SO is in USA. we both use the app WECHAT a lot to keep in touch.. wechat is a very popular app in China as a social utility that connects people with friends on mobiles phones. but since 2 months ago, i could not view the full images of the pictures he have sent me and could not download them. we can still send each other text messages and he can recieve the pictures i have sent to him. And i can view and download other pictures my chinese friends sent me. i think this is strange. does anyone know why it happens or how to fix it?
posted by denimchair to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

does anyone know why it happens?

It's referred to as the Great Firewall of China - wiki.

how to fix it?

Try setting up a shared folder on a box local to him? Not a blocked service like dropbox but something you could sftp into or something.

Or email. Basic email should work for photos, I guess, barring Great Firewall issues.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:44 PM on July 22, 2014

I doubt this has anything to do with Chinese censorship, which the poster presumably is intimately familiar with. I use WeChat all the time from outside China without this kind of issue; moreover, WeChat notifies you if your message has been censored.

Has he tried updating the app on his phone? Registering a new account? Can other people receive his images?
posted by Aiwen at 3:43 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Uninstall / reinstall the app? Update / roll back updates to before two months ago, if that's possible?

Sorry for the generic tech support advice, but, my god, if only I could blame every software bug on the great firewall...
posted by batter_my_heart at 7:01 AM on July 23, 2014 [1 favorite]