'Smartphone zombie' fine cheered on Chinese social media | Hacker News Reader

'Smartphone zombie' fine cheered on Chinese social media

bbc.co.uk

33 pointsscaryclam22 comments

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Netherlands: Let's add lightning strips at the end of crossroads to appear in people's peripheral vision.

China: Just fine them.

Anyone know the details of the law? "activities affecting other vehicles or pedestrians" seems pretty vague...

People looking at their smartphones while driving?

Chinese laws are generally written to be vague.

using camera on the phone augmented by GPS it is possible to recognize that the user started to cross the road and notify the user (West democracy version) or just turn the screen off for the period of the crossing (authoritarian country version).

sadly on iOS you can't use the camera while the app is in the background. Android might work but probably not without problems too

Hacking around a lack of personal responsibility is inefficient. Fines are better, and will incentivize these people to pay attention like responsible adults in potentially hazardous areas of public spaces.

Garbage journalism to cite anonymous internet commenters and then also fail to mention that China's Communist Party liberally uses internet shills to manipulate public opinion.

>A 2016 Harvard University paper found that in contrast to common assumptions, Chinese Internet commentators are mostly paid government bureaucrats, responding to government directives in times of crisis, and flood Chinese social media with pro-government comments. They also rarely engage in direct arguments, and around 80% of the analysed posts involve pro-China cheerleading with inspirational slogans, and 13% involve general praise and suggestions on governmental policies. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

They also use social media censorship strategically to accomplish their own aims. I recall a story of some lower government official (something to do with trains, I think) who screwed something up. The higher ups unusually chose not to censor the social media criticism of him, then used the criticism to justify his removal.

That's a tricky situation, because they want to report about some event in China and they logically quote a few comments to give the general mood. But you're saying the whole thing might be fake, so what should media do? Stop reporting about stuff happening in China? Investigate each comment and find out if it's true or fake? (Not going to happen)

I think what they're doing is all they can do - report on what's happening, objectively, use sources as reliable as possible, etc. And if it turns out the whole thing was made up for political reasons, expose the lies, which the BBC also do.

Whilst a fine might be a good idea for crossing the road, it'll eventually be eroded away over time as the practice of _always_ looking at your phone saturates more and more into society.

Discovering this compulsory need might lead to reducing the actual actions but let's face it: Other things you could recieve a fine for, jail time for, etc. are now in the mainstream. Gay marriage and marijuana are two principal examples (not that I'm against either).

It's only a matter of time, really.

Your comparison doesn't work at all.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to marry someone you love or consuming marijuana whereas crossing the street while essentially being tunnel visioned on a 6" screen is potentially very dangerous for yourself and, more importantly, others.

>There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to marry someone you love or consuming marijuana...

Today, there isn't, no. How about 50 years ago?

Edit: I feel like you entirely missed the point of societal progression, here. There's nothing wrong with it, now, but it doesn't - explicitly - mean that this was never the case or that your arguments of "protecting the people, themselves, or others" was never used to justify the illegality of them.

What does ignoring safety have to do with societal progression? This isn't some progressive cause. You analogy is absurd.

Ah yes, the very dangerous pedestrians! That's depression era revisionism to make people feel less bad for not paying attention, hitting and killing people merely walking with their cars.

"Think of the pedestrians!" is the new "Think of the children!"

It's absolutely dangerous to others to walk into the road without paying attention because it can force oncoming vehicles to behave erratically (fast breaking, swerving, etc).

By this argument, you wouldn't have the pedestrian right-of-way laws that you have today (unless you're in certain areas of the states)... Instead, the onus is on the vehicle to stop and cede right-of-way.

How do you reconcile these two - almost identical precepts? The only difference is the phone and where "attention" is paid, yeah?

If a pedestrian steps out onto a crosswalk and you cannot stop without behaving erratically, you were going too fast for road conditions or you weren't paying attention and you're at fault.

If your quick stop causes problems for any vehicles behind you, they were going too fast or weren't paying attention and they're at fault.

edit: jrockway said it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18932676

It’s not revisionism, it was a cultural change sponsored by the auto industry. We may not like it, we may want to reverse it, but it’s not revisionism.

Indeed.

The reality is that if you're driving fast enough to not be able to stop for someone looking at their phone, you're also driving fast enough to not be able to stop for some kids chasing a ball into the street. You may not mind murdering some dude on Instagram but I bet you'll feel pretty bad about flattening someone's kid who was just playing outside after school. High-speed traffic and pedestrians don't mix. The problem is not distracted pedestrians, the problem is that the situation where the two classes of traffic can mix exist.

Ultimately, pretending that asphalt swaths cutting through the center of society is some "safe zone" for high-speed vehicles was a huge mistake society made. It was never true; someone could always penetrate that space and the unfortunate driver would end up killing them. Very slowly we are walking back on that, sharing space between cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. Lot less people getting killed. But it is unfortunate that China wants to repeat our mistakes there, and blame pedestrians for existing.

Alternatively, consider that this behavior could be an artifact of society still adapting to technological progress. When cell phones first started becoming popular, movie theaters experienced the growing nuisance of people who had not silenced their cell phones before the movie (or perhaps not even realized that a phone could be silenced). Movie theaters contemplated the extreme move of coating the interior of theaters with wallpaper that blocked cell reception, and they would have done it were it not for the FCC. Yet now, two decades later, rather than movie theaters descending into an impenetrable cacophony of ringtones (which is what would be predicted by the "It's only a matter of time, really" stance), society evolved to pressure people into the habit of silencing their phones before movies (aided by the now-ubiquitous plea to do so before the movie begins, but by this point I don't know anyone who actually still needs to be reminded of this).

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