(Yicai Global) Jan. 9 -- Tech titan Tencent Holdings social messaging app WeChat with its 1.1 billion users will unveil a 'short content' function to achieve information diversity to give users more control over their information flow, Zhang Xiaolong, the app's developer, said today.

Zhang, Tencent's vice president, pulled a deliberate no-show at the annual WeChat Open Class event in Guangzhou, but delivered a speech via a video link to drive his point home. "WeChat is not a creative vehicle for everybody, because we cannot expect everybody to write articles every day," he stated, adding, "We have been putting great efforts into 'short content,' which will come out soon if everything goes smoothly."

Zhang analyzed the directional flow of information in his speech. Gene editing is a form of unnatural selection because human beings have wrenched the progress of natural evolution out of its course through gene editing, and similarly, other technological advances have also warped natural selection, he noted.

"Human reflections on the impact of wide information interconnections lag far behind the internet's development, so can people really control their information interconnections? Or is technology leading or even controlling our lifestyles?" Zhang posed the question rhetorically.

People have narrowed the scope of their privacy, while gaining the convenience of access to information as the internet becomes ever more widely used, Zhang noted, saying targeted advertising is actually inimical to users' privacy. He called on his peers to pay attention to data application issues since they hold vast repositories of it.

Oceans of information have also brought trouble to users, allowing them to only see parts of things, he stressed. Notifications to users by technological means decide what information they will see and what kind of a world they will live in, he added.

"This is what we must be thinking about and what we are working hard on," he stressed.

Editor: Ben Armour