Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night
sixthtone.com
sixthtone.com
>wake up feeling sick after a late night of playing video games
>excited to play some halo infinite
>"xbox on"
>"XBOX ON"
>"Please verify that you are "annon332" by saying Doritos™ Dew™ it right!"
>"ERROR! Please drink a verification can"
>reach into my Dontos Mountain Halo War Chest
>only a few cans left, needed to verify 14 times last night
>still feeling sick from the 14
>force it down and grumble out "mmmm that really hit the spot"
>xbox does nothing
>i attempt to smile
>"Connecting to verification server"
>"Verification complete!"
>finally
>boot up halo infinite
>finding multiplayer match...
>"ERRORI User attempting to steal online gameplay!"
>my mother just walked in the room
>"Adding another user to your pass, this will be charged to your credit card. Do you accept?"
>"No!"
>"Console entering lock state!"
>"to unlock drink verification can"
>last can
>"WARNING, OUT OF VERIFICATION CANS, an order has been shipped and charged to your credit card"
>drink half the can, oh god im going to be sick
>pour the last half out the window
>"PIRACY DETECTED! PLEASE COMPLETE THIS ADVERTISEMENT TO CONTINUE"
>the mountain dew ad plays
>i have to dance for it
>feeling so sick
>makes me sing along
>dancing and singing
>"mountain dew is for me and you"
>throw up on my self
>throw up on my tv and entertainment system
>router shorts
>"ERROR NO CONNECTION! XBOX SHUTTING OFF"
This is the real nightmare, active (mandatory) ad participation.
Drink the Kool Aid, say "Oh Yeah!!!"
(If you've never read Venus, Inc. it's even better than Manna and it's more on-point; and it was written in the 1950s!)
https://smile.amazon.com/Venus-Inc-Space-Merchants-War/dp/B0...
I think someone should make a movie or TV series out of this, it'd be the perfect parody of Mad Men in particular and our messed up hyper-corporate dystopia in general
Why won’t you think of the children?
ERROR: CANNOT BEGIN PLAY SESSION UNTIL PLAYER SHAVES FACE
I know you're joking, but a law was passed in Xinjiang back in 2014 preventing people with beards from riding public transport. You literally had to shave before you could board a bus.
Putting the discrimination aside (well that sounded insensitive but bear with me), very sorry for those poor people who are like me, who get a red face for DAYS after shaving.
Officially, no. But in reality, yes. They want to make the Uyghurs more Han to reduce feelings of separatism.
It's circular logic but probably good enough for the fascists...
Er, fascists? We're talking about the CCP here -- these are communists.
The Wikipedia definition "Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy" seems to tick all the boxes in the case of China, although I don't know if they fit the definition "far right" (too lazy to see if they tick those other boxes).
The problem with "-ist" and "-ism" words is everyone has their own definition what this means. Bernie Sanders can call himself a socialist that thinks the rich should be taxed more, and some dumbass will think he hates Jews because the Nazi party also has the word "Socialism" in it.
Also, if you want to say "They're communists because that word is in their party name", then the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea must be a great place to live, since they're democratic, and belong to the people!
Sadly, most people are not that smart. Which is one reason why so many people are willing to give up their privacy AND money in exchange for the "permission" to use those services.
So the main problem here is the law. Not Tencent. But many Chinese people support and even called for this law. The supports for this law is cultural, circumstantial and societal.
In the US, Tencent should adhere to US laws and cultural customs. First, for this specific case, Tencent won't implement it outside of China because 1) why would they limit their own ability to make money 2)why would they not align with US culture? Second, If US has a law that bans using facial recognition, all companies will comply and these issues will not exists. You can enforce practices and values through laws.
Also this is Tencent specific system. They are using facial recognition to verify the current user is who they say they are. Just like IPhone has face ID. Because for other verification methods, kids just bypasses them. And I believe they only do verification ones during the banned hours. It doesn't consistently monitor you. The law targets online gaming providers, and fines them if they provide service outside the allowed hours. It doesn't incarcerate kids. Law enforcement doesn't track kids playing games and when they play. And Tencent doesn't share kids data with law enforcement.
Tencent, like all major Chinese corporations, is just a thinly veiled extension of the Chinese state. And I'm sure someone will try a "no u" about Facebook etc. effectively being extensions of the US government but that doesn't change the reality of how all major corps in China operate.
The Chinese state defines Chinese laws so this is basically restating the GP's point that "Tencent is doing this to comply to Chinese laws"
It's technically true for American corporations (which follow American laws created by the American government), but as you mention, it's not quite the same because the American system of government has significantly higher inertia and building consensus is significantly higher effort, so you generally only see the effect in certain industries that span decades-long bi-partisan projects (e.g. military industrial complex)
the political theatre is only when they don't want to do something and delay. the state is swift with pursuing its interests.
I would argue these have already met overwhelming bipartisan consensus over the past few decades (particularly since 9/11). Your average privacy nut (myself included) are not too happy about it, your average person knows nothing about it, but your average senator or governor is strongly in favor.
Americans quite like out-of-sight out-of-mind solutions to problems involving Bad People, even unsavory solutions like mass spying or drone killings. The moment that the national security powers for example start blocking porn or video games, consensus and acceptance would instantly disappear.
They will, if they can make money doing it.
Also, asking two verified-ID mainland china users to "vouch" for you and be responsible for your activities if you are a foreigner.
Almost every service in China requires "real name verification" - you can't play games without it, for example.
This has been place for several years, https://i.imgur.com/FBrCwuX.jpg
What the person above implies is that the other two are on the hook when you start spreading any Government information. I'd assume that the government would investigate anyone in your friend list if you do that though regardless of whether they verified you or not, so it's kind of a minor detail in my opinion.
What person? The first paragraph in ev1’s comment (and the ‘liveness’ reference in the reply) are not about ‘vouching’.
If they ask for KYC in the mainland I suppose it’s understandable since it serves a lot more than a chat app there (payment, SSO for a lot of other services).
Yeah it's a faff, but at least no one will accuse you of being an enemy of the state if you do this like trying to avoid tagging in China.
SIM cards are used for transmitting voice in an insecure fashion, so you can't be sure. Some voice codecs are even designed to do something very similiar to fingerprinting voices.
> No one is taking your [...] biometric details
They were already taken when you had¹ to get the ID in the first place.
¹ The federal republic directly adopted laws from nazi germany requiring ID for every citizen. This law was initially introduced to acquire data about jews and people fit for military service.
> to match everything you ever say or do against you just to activate a sim card
This was never about surveillance by private entities! Federal agencys can match everything you say based on the fact that the SIM card in your portable bug is linked directly to you.
> but at least no one will accuse you of being an enemy of the state if you do this like trying to avoid tagging in China.
You can be certain that you end up in a database if you use a foreign SIM card from a non-KYC-country for a long period of time in a residential area. Your only defence is your network provider not cooperating unless forced by law.
Germany is being turned into a surveillance state bit by bit and I am fed up by people trying to defend it!
I've literally been doing this for the last 11 years, guess I'm screwed then :P
>>They were already taken when you had¹ to get the ID in the first place.
Yes, and the mobile operator doesn't get them, while in the article discussed it's the "private" operator gathering all this data.
>>SIM cards are used for transmitting voice in an insecure fashion, so you can't be sure.
The difference being, that here it's done openly and in a visible fashion "either you do this, or you can't play our games".
>>¹ The federal republic directly adopted laws from nazi germany requiring ID for every citizen.
That sounds about on a level with an argument that since Hitler was vegetarian, all vegetarians are nazis. Your country adopted a lot of laws from the Third Reich. Mine adopted a lot of laws from the communist republic it once was. Neither fact makes those countries anything like their predecessors. The law that every citizen has to have an ID is a good one IMHO(wait for Americans to chime in and say this is against their personal freedom or something).
So hidden surveillance is more ok than open violations?
> That sounds about on a level with an argument that since Hitler was vegetarian, all vegetarians are nazis.
I just wanted to explain why germans have to have an ID.
I knew someone would inevitably come to this conclusion.
No, of course it's not better. But this article is very specifically about an open and overt gathering of biometric data.
Some Italian cell operators do. For example, when you are buying a new sim card for Iliad, you do this in front of an automated kiosk where you have to scan your ID, then face camera and say outloud "my name is Insert Your Name Here, and I would like to make a phone service contract with Iliad".
I thought that was reasonable, but it didn't occur to me that reading the numbers was enough to train an AI to reproduce my voice. Now I'm less sure.
Seems I need a more tech-savvy solicitor...
I think it's actually a legal requirement in the UK if they wish to allow you to sign up online.
This is in conjunction with ID scanning.
I think this functionality was necessary as part of complying with KYC laws. And AFAIK WeChat has very similar functionality to Revolut (among much more) so even if the app was non-Chinese (e.g. European), it would need a similar flow.
Basically identifying your customer and confirming their identity, e.g. via a video call or at a post office etc.
(Kind of like the scarier version of the store cashier stealing your credit card digits - because you can’t just order a new one.)
In the West, KYC means that a bank is going to ask to see your ID before letting you open an account.
In China, KYC means that, in order to use something as pedestrian as social media, you have to let the CCP AI dragnet build a profile that can be used to surveil you for the rest of your life.
Need to pay registration for car? Wechat
Need to verify covid screening to enter the country as a resident? Wechat
Need to request a taxi? Wechat
Need to pay your electricity bill? Wechat
EVERYTHING is done through wechat.
I'm not so sure about that, reading Facebook comment threads on news articles clearly shows that a real name policy isn't really stopping people from misbehaving online.
Might a real name policy have toned down the communication that lead to case Tenacity https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99 , though?
I did notice nobody outright challenged the actual claim (except for the Facebook comment that touched the topic).
The result was amusing. It was busted by picture of adult face, or by kids moving facial muscles.
The facial recognition was just a distraction to evade law enforcement.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same with these games. In fact, I would be surprised if a company went to great lengths to reduce their potential consumer base.
Today they use banking cards, which still work for age verification after they expired so they are just shared between the youngsters
Not only are you implying that there is a back door in the phone operating systems, but also in every other device on the same network as the phone to hide such traffic.
What you’re suggesting is certainly possible, but the idea that it’s been rolled out to the average person doesn’t seem likely.
Given how much analytics garbage phones regularly spew out, you'd have to perform HTTPS MITM attacks to check this – and that's the kind of thing that alters the behaviour of the system you're measuring.
I still don't think it's likely, but if somebody were to find some suspicious code, I have no real reason to doubt that it's doing something like this.
Thank god¹ android is open source.
¹ Not religious, I just don't want to thank google :\
If there is a generic backdoor it's certainly not in the OS but rather in the modems firmware. The scary part is that all modem manufacturers are based in countrys that are known to violate human rights in organized ways.
> What you’re suggesting is certainly possible, but the idea that it’s been rolled out to the average person doesn’t seem likely.
It's a known fact that government agencys of certain states hack devices of people they target. An "average person" is still affected by this since they can be targeted "by accident" for multiple reasons. (e.g. through friends, being at suspicious locations, wrong vacation destination etc.) So it doesn't even matter if a device is backdoored.
I notice a lot of network traffic coming from my phone to *.googleapis.com network endpoints, even when I'm not using my phone. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?
Same for smart speakers. It's a hairs breadth away from complete audio & video surveillance.
Eh, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was more about empathy, the meaning of humanity, how we justify segregation, etc; its perspective on the human condition was at a much more fundamental/introspective level than the issues discussed in this thread. Though I suppose there might be parallels between the empathy box and the Mountain-Dew (TM) greentext in the top comment.
The subjugated population--the andys--were used not to critique subjugation itself as much as the analyze the implications of the justifications behind that subjugation, especially given the the fact that andys don't feel empathy and had to break the law to be where they are (and the protagonist + POV is a law enforcement officer). It wasn't about the what as much as it was about the why and its implications.
Books that critique the existence of norms/institutions are great, but my favorites are books that choose to accept their presented status-quos but analyze what the implications are and what accepting that status-quo means about ourselves; readers can then look inside themselves and make their own calls. It's the epitome of "show, don't tell".
Knowingly maybe. But all those IP Cameras have had face detection for almost a decade, They've been deployed extensively in homes around the world, They've been phoning to their home to provide even basic features or at least the DDNS based features and are riddled with vulnerabilities.
One could use firewall, custom firmware to fix this to an extent but not everyone has the means or intention to do it.
- Maximum 1.5 hours of gaming on weekdays
- Maximum 3 hours of gaming on weekends
- No games between 10pm and 8am (note that school typically starts between 7 and 8am)
South Korea has similar types of restrictions, by the way. No gaming for minors (under 16) between midnight and 6am. I think Vietnam may have something similar as well.
Same goes for South Korea. Actually, China and South Korea are the two most dominant regions for many games.
> China's most famous e-sports player, Jian Zihao, has officially retired from gaming aged 23, citing ill-health.
> He had been a professional gamer since 2012, playing League of Legends under the name of "Uzi".
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52920786
He would have been ~15 in 2012.
And Korea's law is much less restrictive since kids can play as much as they like before midnight.
I'm disappointed but not surprised that China makes rules like this, but I always thought South Korea was basically a free country and never expected this sort of rule from them.
Maybe that's why I dislike this kind of paternalism.
Perhaps it would be free-er for the government to intervene and force everyone to have a different cultural expectation, but both are very substantial interferences.
Going to go ahead and recommend against those words in that order.
Most places restrict the age at which you can buy alcohol and most places seem to restrict it to at least 18. 21 is higher than the average but legal age laws seem to be pretty standard.
that said .. i'm surprised about their laws, especially since SK a bit land-of-gaming
E.g. for many years they had a law where to sign up for any large chat forum (like a Korean Hacker News) you'd have to enter your government ID numbers so they could effectively ban you for harassment/slander etc.
When I was a kid in America, my parents disallowed videogames in the house. No NES or Genesis for us. On the occasions I'd go over to other kids' houses and play, I had no idea what I was doing. On the one hand, this seemed oppressive. But at least it was coming from my parents, not from the gov't.
What we did have was a Mac II that I had pretty much free reign on, as long as I wasn't playing games. This is how I learned to code - trying to write my own games. In the long run, it made me a pretty bad gamer; I have the gaming equivalent of an eating disorder (I have serious guilt issues with playing anything for more than a couple hours). But it made me a pretty decent hacker.
Obviously, it's disgusting for the gov't to do anything along these lines with facial recognition of minors who should be even more protected from surveillance than the adult public. Extremely Orwellian. But I'm interested what kind of unanticipated side effects it might have as far as kids learning to roll-their-own entertainment.
Is it simply power? What is the point of it?
You cannot crime or human behavior to misbehave.
I wonder how long it will be until China's citizens start to crack under the pressure.
In Confucianism, the relationship between a father and a son, a superior and their subordinate, a state and its citizen are considered equal. Therefore it is considered normal for the state to be paternalistic. Also, collective responsibility takes precedence over individual freedom. Each person is supposed to conform to its role in society. Children’s role is to study, rather than play video games all night.
Together, you get a video game ban, enforced by the full power of the state.
Until a few years ago, video game consoles are banned in China for the exact same reason.
Hope EU will finally get their heads together and act as well before it's too late.
I don’t think China is sending such people to re-education camps. Those camps don’t have the infrastructure required to care for such people. They only really “work” as an oubliette for able-bodied/able-minded people that will understand and carry out orders when threatened with force.
(I’d believe you if you instead said they were e.g. having nursing staff at Chinese hospitals do secret state-sanctioned eugenic infanticides, to avoid having such people around in the first place. But allowing parents to invest a lot of resources into raising unable-to-conform children, just to then inevitably send those children [likely permanently] to re-education camps, seems wasteful.)
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/811/toddler-jia-jias-death-hi...
Similar to the difference between state prisons and state mental asylums in America in the 1960s.
Someone opened an “Internet addiction treatment center”. Parents would pay to send their kids there, where they are deprived of their freedom, be indoctrinated about their “sins”, and even subject to electric shock. [1]
The state official television network, CCTV, aired a documentary endorsing the practice.
I am not making this up.
Obviously nobody cares about this anymore because literally everyone is an Internet addict.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Yongxin#Internet_addictio...
In the west there's similar solutions. For game time, parents can use parental controls, time limits and bedtimes to set up phones and the like to not work at night. The government(s) are more concerned about gambling mechanics in games.
Back then, for an average person, there wasn't much to do on the Internet, except online games and chatting with friends, both of which are considered a waste of time. As a result, Internet itself was demonized, and Internet addiction was considered a problem, even a mental disorder.
Nowadays, China has a booming tech sector. Everyone is using the Internet all the time to browse TikTok videos, stream TV shows, order food delivery and shop deals. And people stopped talking about Internet addiction, because suddenly they realize they themselves fit the clinical definition, which was to be online for more than a few hours a day.
Beating up by your parents are pretty common in China, and nobody gives a flying f--k about what you do with you kids. People would praise you for deploying violence, because that shows you are a strict parent, and the level of willingness you would spend on 'rectifying' the behavior of your kids.
And the parents would always tell the kids the violence right now is good for them, with a kind of twisted logic that early age suffering would be made up with later success in your life.
So to many Chinese family, in China or in west, the kids are not treated as individuals, they are a form of property/investment of the whole family. The parents are willing to invest a ton of money in the kids' education, in exchange to greater control/say in shaping up the kids' future.
It is a different social contract all together, I don't personally like it, but I am thankful for my parents for paying up all my tuition all the way until graduate degree, then that is super expensive for them, so there is trade-off.
[edit] We were also taught that marijuana and other drugs help you relax and be creative, that sex within a loving relationship is a good thing, that there's nothing wrong with pornography, that prostitution is an important outlet for sexually repressed men who would otherwise become violent, and that guns are for idiots who can't talk their way out of problems. All of these are still very dangerous views in most of the world.
First time I realized I was playing my PSP, gameBoy and PlayStation2/3 games illegally
I'd argue the fact that CCP solves problems at the source is exactly the reason China didn't crack when people thought it would.
That particular link is not causitive, but correlative. Very little of education causes productivity.
You can read my post history; I'm anything but a Chinese Nationalist and Xi lover. Still, I don't think this law is crazy.
It clearly serves a purpose of protecting children from harm. The enforcement is creepy, but as a law I don't see it as any different to the laws about parents supplying alcohol to minors in Australia.
This is without even getting into a discussion about government monitoring citizens through cameras in their homes. That is quite literally the premise of 1984. Well I should take that back, the premise was the gov could watch you at any time, not that they actively are.
I wasn't referring to the cameras (" The enforcement is creepy"...), but it does make sense why a government would want to pass laws limiting gaming/screen use late at night amongst teenagers.
I went through it as a teenager and the lack of sleep causes all kinds of mental health and behavioural issues.
The Chinese government is worse than most others, but not for this reason. All governments and societies make all kinds of "tyrannical" rules about raising children, in the name of limiting harm to children. This is no different.
In Germany, the government does not trust parents to home-school their children
In the US, legal adults between the ages of 18 and 21 can decide to join the Army, travel to exotic lands and die there. The same adults are not trusted to make the decision of buying and drinking beer.
No, they objectively don't, wtf. Stop normalizing this kind of behavior
All societies have them, and many such rules are widely accepted by the societies that have them as beneficial. E.g. such laws are the reason parents are not allowed to expose their children to obscene images, even if the parents really are convinced that doing so would benefit their children.
Also, how is "not allowing homeschooling" tyrannical? Corona especially has shown us that the quality of education received at a school is much higher than at home. Every child deserves to not be held back by their parents in this way.
Because we, the Dutch, haven't been really progressive for like at least two decades.
There's limits on the age you're allowed to buy alcohol in The Netherlands just like in other countries.
Among a population of parents who have a revealed preference not to home-school, sure. But it says nothing about outcomes among a population of parents who actually want to home-school their kids.
This definitely depends on whether those are the only two choices. If homeschooling includes the parents having the choice to send their kids to private academies of their choosing instead, then it's possible that homeschooling can be superior.
I don't know what it's like in the Netherlands, but in South Korea, with the very strong private academy culture, the public school system is actual comparatively subpar. Public schools are more useful for subjects like civics and history than more academic subjects like math and science.
This is very different to homeschooling.
Particularly with parents making a conscious decision to homeschool and properly planning how they're going to find the time.
I'm genuinely curious-- What specifially are you talking about?
I'm having a really hard time coming up with harmful misinformation that is perpetuated intentionally by the education system (or government) in any western country...
1. "Coronavirus: 'We do not recommend face masks for general wearing'". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52153145
2. "Timeline: The UK's arguments against face masks for all". https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-06/Timeline-The-UK-s-ar...
3. "Coronavirus: Chief medical officer tells public not to wear masks". https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-...
4. "Why is the Government so adamant that face masks don't work?". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/government-adama...
5. "Why Telling People They Don't Need Masks Backfired". https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...
6. "The Face Mask Debate Reveals a Scientific Double Standard". https://www.wired.com/story/the-face-mask-debate-reveals-a-s...
7. "Fauci Confirms Public-Health Experts Downplayed Efficacy of Masks to Ensure They Would Be Available to Health-care Workers". https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-confirms-public-health-experts-...
With Trump (or maybe just the rise of social media in general) cancel culture has become rampant. The general discussion culture has become angrier and unforgiving. People feel they are fighting a war and the enemy has to be shut down at all cost.
With Corona and climate many people feel like literally their lives are at risk. With Corona, censorship of dissenting opinions has become the norm.
I don't want my kids to be taught that boys are bad by nature and have to be taught to be like girls, and girls are only good if they behave like boys.
I don't want my kids to be taught that they are inherently sexist or something-phobic if they are not gay or Trans, or merely approach somebody they are attracted to.
I don't want them to be taught that they are inherently racist and bad because they are white.
I don't want them to be taught that they are doomed because global warming will end the world in a couple of years.
I don't want them to be taught that capitalism exploits people and socialism is the only recourse.
I don't want them to be taught that they should listen to "experts" and believe the scientists. They should be taught critical thinking and doing science.
It's not the same to have the parents purposefully owning and caring and dedicating to the education of the children and on the other side, an unexpected circumstance that causes your children to suddenly stay at home and try to follow an education program in which no one is prepared for such scenario.
Homeschool as a way of life is not comparable to what happened during/because of the pandemic.
"Not allowing homeschooling" in an absolute way is completely tyrannical.
I think one example is the age of consent, which is 14 in China, lower than most of Europe and the USA. It's a good alternative to video games...
Or is that more of a firmly and deeply held personal belief more akin to blind faith or hopeful candor than an actual opinion supported by facts?
From the guidelines:
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
I am sure I can't find other examples. Not saying what china does is right, but we obviously haven't mastered raising children either.
My understanding is that studies showed that drinking before a certain age (on average of course) has a high chance of causing physiological brain deterioration, but I haven’t done any recent research to see if this was still a thing. The age requirement is the government not trusting their citizens not to damage themselves.
Let's not assume the drinking age is anything to do with evidence.
It's also a top public spending priority: https://www.athleticbusiness.com/college/the-highest-paid-pu...
My college gives a presentation to freshman that essentially says "we know you're going to drink, so please drink responsibly and take care of yourself." And I personally think this is much better than telling kids to not drink underage.
It reminds me of parents who teach their kids abstinence and then are shocked to find them pregnant.
The incoherence is still there.
Not trusted not to damage themselves with alcool, but trusted to be given weapons and sent to the far side of the world where quite a few people would love to get their heads or, barring that, at least kill them?
From the little research I’ve done, soldiers have greater chances of dying violently, being maimed, of remaining traumatised years after their service, and of killing themselves once back home (apparently more kill themselves after than are killed in action by enemy bullets [1]).
How is letting them enlist not letting them damage themselves?
It isn’t, because the average age of the enlisted soldier is less than 21. So if they actually went all the way and bothered being aligned with themselves and their supposed values, they’d bar anyone less than 21 from joining the army and lose many, many, of what are probably the most easy to recruit recruits.
It’s just hypocrisy dressed up in fine rags.
[1]: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-healt...
What does society lose if enlisting before 21 is banned? Most of its recruits. The military would be in ruins, the strength of the country on the battlefield in jeopardy.
What does society lose if drinking before 21 is banned? Some revenue for brewing companies and associated tax income, which are easily compensated by having saved significant amounts of brain cells in young adults to have an impact on the economy for generations.
Everything government is a tradeoff. And in politics. And in life.
However, pretending that preserving these precious young people even against themselves is of the utmost importance while still making such tradeoffs is hypocrisy.
There’s no shame in making such a choice, and wether or not it is a wrong one is a whole other matter.
The hypocrisy lies in pretending it isn’t what it is.
Also, other countries have an average age of 28 for their soldiers. And given that apparently the brain’s functions, and particularly the prefrontal cortex, aren’t all finished until 25[1], it seems like a sensible thing to wait a few years before relying on their judgement on how to apply the use of lethal force in more than stressful environments.
But then again, if one were to be cynical, one could say it makes them all the more easier to recruit.
[1]: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con...
They're trusted to join the Army which includes fairly strict supervision from the chain of command. This is more akin to drinking with your parents than going off by yourself.
"We are going to trust you to go into war - a stressful situation - and know who to kill and who not to kill, if need be... but no, we definitely won't let you sit at home and drink a beer, even if it is with your parents. That is criminal"
It is pretending to treat someone like a mature adult, with all of the responsibilities, but refusing to allow beer and bars, which are common recreational and social habits in the culture.
This is to protect children from their parents, this "anti-excessive-gaming" bullshit is directly attacking personal agency! If you have the resources (time, money, teachers etc.) to get your children the same education they would get in a (german) public school you might as well found a private one. This is even incentivized by federal and local government. ("Freie Trägerschaft")
(Anecdotal warning:) Everyone I've met (about a dozen people) who wanted to home school their children did so for a specific reason. They were religious, wanted their kid to hold the same religious/esoteric views and thought their kid was their property. Most (older) kids were very happy they could visit an actual school.
Unless Germany's public school education somehow doesn't show its results on tests like PISA then this shouldn't be too difficult to provide to one or two kids. More than that would make it way harder. And I'm sure that if you did try to found a private school you'd have to deal with a mile long list of inane regulations as seems standard in all aspects of Germany.
Just an example of the absurd regulations in a different subject: Germany requires a license to stream to more than 500 people and they've actually enforced this on streamers. The license can cost €10k.
This information is outdated and misleading. Since 2020, licenses for public broadcast are only required for broadcasts which, averaged over six months, exceed 20000 viewers and have significant importance for the formation of public and private opinion [1].
Prior to this change, some streamers had indeed been forced to acquire such a license (although there were more conditions than just regularly having 500 viewers). Also, licenses for streamers actually cost around 1000-2500 €, instead of the 10000 € you claimed. In addition, there was an exception for cases where this would be an undue hardship [2]. The regulator basically agreed that this was pretty silly, but that it planned to enforce the law as written (as is its job), until it was changed (which it has been).
[1] (german) § 54 MStV, https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/MStV-54
[2] (german) https://t3n.de/news/livestreams-rundfunklizenz-1175321/
I went to a school that practiced "Montessori pedagogy" and I wish I could have visited a "normal" school in hindsight.
My cousin is home-schooling her daughters, and they're all years ahead of kids their same age while only needing to study ~9 hours a week. They have two full weekdays devoted to social activities with other homeschooled kids. It looks really amazing IMO
That was before I met home-schooled kids from the rest of the country, where it had nothing to do with giving them a better education; it had a lot to do with limiting their education, and forcing them into a fundamentalist Christian or Mormon ideology. Those kids really didn't get out to socialize much, and they didn't get a good education, either.
I think parents have a right to homeschool their kids, and a government ban on that scares me. But I also think the parents need to meet or exceed the qualifications of the teachers who would otherwise be teaching, and [edit][strikethrough]the government[/strikethrough] *society* has some interest in preventing someone from having 48 children and forming a cult.
So like a lot of other stuff extremist wackos do, "this is why we can't have nice things." The goal is to walk a fine line in the center where government can stop crazy people from using freedoms to do crazy things, while still allowing sane people to have the rights and privileges they need as free individuals within the framework of society.
I think having to pass standardized tests as homeschooled kids makes sense
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a22724843/ki...
Only couple of months ago in my area a mum had left a 3 year old and baby in the car, walked into her house and fell asleep for an hour. She woke up, realised what happened, ran to the car and the kids were dead. Another more recent incident occurred where a child was left in a day care bus unknowingly by the driver. He did not inspect the seats prior to locking up the bus outside in the sun. The child was found dead when he got back in the bus that afternoon.
My wife was screamed at by someone who thought there was zero risk involved in bringing the little ones through an incredibly busy parking lot where everyone drives SUVs and oversized trucks. It’s as if they couldn’t imagine a situation where the parents have already done the risk analysis and determined it is far less safe walking a pack of kids through the jungle of death machines.
Edit. For those interested in the risk analysis side:
“ On average, 38 children under the age of 15 die each year from heatstroke after being left in a vehicle. Nearly every state has experienced at least one death since 1998. In both 2018 and 2019 a record number of 53 children died after being left in a hot vehicle.”
..
“ an average of 50 children per week are injured by being backed over in a parking lot or driveway. Despite the increasing prevalence of back-up cameras in vehicles, parking lots remain dangerous for families due to: Driver distraction (looking for a perfect spot or other in-vehicle distractions)”
Totally not trolling, just pushing back against media misinformation.
Who lets their children run around in different direction around moving vehicles? Thats the whole point of having a parent present. Thats your responsibility... you go on about risk, but ignore the fact you should go another time or another shop if its too busy for you to manage multiple kids, find a car park closer to the entrance or find some help. Thats mitigating risk. Locking kids in cars with engines running is the exact opposite of risk mitigation.
I don't claim that any of this is easy, quite the opposite. But it was 'too hard' is not going to cut it.
You've completely distorted the statistics to justify, I assume your wife's actions. Imagine the scenario where instead of all parents taking their child with them into the shops, they all left their kids in the car with engine running. What do you think would happen to your statistics?
That is the U.S.. Which is why I brought this point up. Different countries/cultures have different perspectives.
It's only in the past 15 years that our histrionic society has decided that in all instances, without exception, that leaving your children unsupervised in a car is attempted murder.
My parents used to leave me in the car from time to time, they always made sure the window was cracked, the car was out of direct sunlight, and the sunshade was put on the windscreen. On the other hand, the thing that came closest to killing me (multiple times) was traffic.
That said, here in Australia, apparently parents leaving their kids in the car while they go to the pub to play pokies (slot machines) is enough of a problem that venues have signs reminding people not to leave children in cars. The pub round the corner from my place even has a kids playground, which I suspect was put in to stop parents leaving their kids in the car.
Those incidents I mentioned occurred in Australia. ‘Well the incident rate is low’, that’s because almost all parents take their kids with them. If we all decided to start leaving kids in cars then the number of incidents would increase.
You live in a community, if you take actions generally frowned upon by the majority of people, like it or not you will possibly receive some negative consequences, especially if it involves children. Likewise a business like a pub would be trying to avoid an incident with a child left in a car while their parents played their addictive pokies. No business wants to deal with those negative consequences.
This is the logic used by people who call the police on children walking to the park without an adult. These are commonly people who watch a lot of news (and are therefore more misinformed according to multiple studies) and who would fail basic knowledge tests on actual risks of various activities.
This is all one big joke. I think I'm about finished arguing the absurd.
That is completely different to kids in cars, there wont be a time where we will decide 'Hey maybe leaving them in the car is better.', it just wont happen.
Society views always change, that should be obvious to anyone. Events that shock people change the way we think about certain situations. Kids dying in cars as hot as oven's is one of them.
[{"@type":"WebPageElement","isAccessibleForFree":"False","cssSelector":".content-container"}],"articleBody":"It happened on a mild day in March, in the quiet suburb in Virginia where I grew up....
Are there any other countries that enforce a daily time limit on an activity, whether for children or adults?
It seems either an activity (like smoking) is typically banned entirely or allowed; having it be partially allowed like this is difficult to enforce and consequently invites weird and invasive measures like these.
- Anyone driving a large vehicle for more than 9 hours per day, 56 in a week, and 90 over a two-week period in the European Union.
- Adults using a tanning under a sunlamp for more than one cycle in a 24 hour period in many countries (others, such as Australia, did ban them entirely).
- Children spending more than 10 hours per day in child care centers in many US states, such as Washington.
- Alcohol purchases are limited to certain times of day in many European countries (compare "No games between 10pm and 8am" in China).
Many of these are very difficult to enforce, and enforcement benefits from intrusive technology (such as tachographs) and even more so from intrusive AI (e.g. many EU countries were set to implement platforms to monitor truck drivers using AI, until the European Commission's Artificial Intelligence Act forced a change of plans).
I also disagree with the previous examples being as different in kind as you seem to think: e.g. the "no home-schooling" requirements, combined with mandatory attendance, still limits children's gaming time to something less than 19 hours on weekdays. Which is different from "no more than 1.5 hours", but only quantitatively, not qualitatively. And it certainly matches "the government does not trust its citizens to raise their own children", which was my main point.
Well, I guess you should give those examples another read. Unless you consider using a tanning bed to be work. Not to mention "buying alcohol at night".
What China has done is take an arbitrary, ridiculous rule like that, and make it even more absurd. Imagine if they said that after 30 minutes, a massage is by definition sex. And if you do it more than 90 minutes a week, it's sex addiction.
It's just arbitrary ways of controlling the populace. I doubt if they care whether kids play games. It's just a way to start facial recognition for the social credit system early.
It is legal to smoke. It is legal to go into a restaurant. However, it is not legal to go into a restaurant and smoke.
That's neither arbitrary nor ridiculous, it actually makes a lot of sense.
I will agree with you that often if not always, rules come with a background shady agenda behind them, such as this one being about mass surveillance.
But it is critically important to understand the purpose of things before disregarding them.
System is linked and processed by data from public security, i.e. government which has more right to bio data than aggressive harvesting by public companies, which PRC is actively cracking down on. In terms of data policies, that's about as reasonable as can be expected and more protection most in the west is expected to receive.
This isn't even a blanket game ban, no different than gov setting up ratings board in response to public opinion (Chinese parents) to block kids from watching certain movies. There's a decades worth of non-always online, DRM free games, emulators etc for kids to waste time and develop skills on. No different than growing up 10 years ago before always-online games became the norm, maybe even preferrable since it cuts down on exposure now endemically popular gambling gaming mechanics and micro transactions (which the legislation also limits).
It is like you don't sell cigarettes to kids. Sure you can say the governments don't trust their parents on how to teach their kids. Gaming is a health issue the same as everything else.
You mean like they've been doing for millennia? Probably no unanticipated side effects.
Though PC-bangs (Internet cafes) are where you can't get away with this restriction - usually they check your IDs and kick all minors out when it becomes 10pm. What really sucks for kids in South Korea is that cram schools (hagwons) also end at 10pm (another national restriction) - which means that after a stressful day in hagwon they have no time to actually play without circumventing the rules...
I would be absolutely livid if my government tried to tell me how much time I could spend doing what I wanted, and remember distinctly being conscious of making those decisions for myself from at least 12+ (lying a lot because of the amount of services that made me say I was over 13).
As a kid my school's DRM prevented more modern, online games so we played a cracked version to CS 1.6 over the local network, it was loads of fun.
Vietnam may have these laws (I don't know), but they are not enforced in any way nor are there software steps to enforce it (ask for SSN, ask for proof of age)
So it is true, Chinese parents, or Confucian inspired ones, see gaming as something more sinister than drugs.
It still falls under the celebrated American umbrella of using ai to manipulate peoples behaviour and thinking
This move won’t be done from the kindness of their heart and to get kids to reduce gaming consumption - it will be a move they have been instructed to do from the Chinese government.
These companies can’t really push back either - if you want an example see what happened to Jack Ma.
Not out of goodwill.
Tencent profits hugely from gaming addiction, they know it and exploit it to whatever extent they could without drawing serious ire. They use their near monopoly on personal communications (WeChat, QQ) and huge market share on social media (WeChat), video streaming (Tencent Video) and other forms of media to subtly and not-so-subtly push their cash cow games, Honor of Kings being the prime example. I won’t list the shady tactics I’ve heard, which you can hear from I suppose any young urban-dwelling person in China.
They are a big part of the problem in the first place.
The experience is probably the digital equivalent of hitting rock bottom, but it does shame me into stopping and is probably good for my mental health overall.
I can’t imagine a western company doing that for their customers. Can you imagine Facebook actively trying to get you to spend less time on their platform? The closest is Netflix “are you still there?” but they’re just trying to save bandwidth.
Edit: https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktoktips/video/6781608404646464774
I think people shouldn't underestimate the way people counter react to rules they do not like or agree with on some level.
But yeah, it definitely requires certain circumstances, and it's not realistic for everyone.
"Externally imposed restrictions" is what parents and society do. Then, internalising and understanding these restrictions is part of the education process.
Children are told not to spend too much time gaming by their parents (hopefully) and said parents also impose restrictions when this is not so (hopefully), for instance.
Judging from observing my peers, extrisinc worked better in long term. With few exceptions, those whose parents did not restricted gaming just continued to play really a lot. Those whose parents did were more likely to discover something else to do.
It won't take long at this rate until it's completely normal for the software of big companies deciding what you can and can't do at all times during the day.
> a time-sensitive facial recognition ... linked with big data from the central public security system ... "We will conduct a face screening for accounts registered with real names and that have played for a certain period of time at night" ... Facial recognition is a welcome sign
So here is the image in my head: A man, Mr Zhao, 35 years old, just finished showering, half naked, lying on his bed, playing a Tencent game before sleep. Then, all of a sudden, a pop up showed up, "To protect the flowers of our bright future, please verify you are you, Mr Zhao".
Now, think what Mr Zhao would do? Get all dressed up, lights on and fully prepared for the "Verification Interview" with the AI (and maybe a night shift worker at Tencent too)? Nah... Probably not.
Hahaha! Poor Mr Zhao, been forced to take a "bed photo", right?
Well, it's funny to think until you realized a 8 years old could also lying on his bed a play Tencent game on parents phone before sleep.
And what Tencent want to do? Capture optical data and possibly send it to multiple storage and processing sites over the Internet?
Yeah, great idea, way to go boy!
My final point: I use few Tencent products and I know a lots of smart engineers in Tencent. But been their user, I often just can't understand how can they design their product so wrong. This facial recognition powered "Child Predator" can be an example of that -- High tech? Yes; Very wrong? Yes.
Could Tencent please put their talents to good use instead of build something brain-dead like this one?
There are issues here, but this isn't it.
I'd recommend reading some 1984. China is a genocidal, military dictatorship. I wouldn't be surprised if they force a hot war out of the cold one currently brewing.
No need to mention capture imagery of a child (which the system would totally do, and kids will give it a try believe or not) without consent from their parent alone is problematic regardless it's accidental or not.
And above all, that system is useless to begin with. Think about following questions: 1) When do you verify? Before, during or after the game? 2) Do you have to verify at the spot at night? 3) How often do you re-verify?
BTW, there is an anti game addiction system already in place in China, which is based on photo ID (Resident ID card) verification. In my opinion, the system is doing well enough already even for today's kids.
If Tencent really care the addiction that much, maybe they should just shutdown the game server during the night.
You're assuming that the system works perfectly. You're on Hacker News! We have articles every day of major companies being hacked and/or having systems not work as expected and failing in grandiose ways. Now add minors into that situation. Pictures on minors. If that doesn't make you feel uncomfortable then I'm uncomfortable.
Putting more cameras in kids rooms are not doing anything to protect them (especially when those cameras are connected to the internet). It just makes child exploitation easier.
And given how currently the facial recognition system works, it'll probably ask you to look up, look down and blink all while it records your move. That's a lot of things to be captured.
You want kids to be safe? Don't put cameras in their rooms. And especially don't connect those cameras to the internet. I really hope people have hardware switches.
If you know there is no punishment for circumventing controls, then you would do it, however if you thought that circumvention might result in the CPP knocking on your door you would think twice.
And it's everywhere.
I suspect that on this forum there would be a mix of opinion about if that is a good idea or not. I mean, personally I think it should be up to parents to manage this, but I can totally see how some would have the opposite opinion about it. I don't think it's totally out of bounds as a concept for government to regulate this.
I have seen plenty of people calling for laws regulating mystery boxes for example on this very forum, and you could have the exact same parental responsibility argument there too.
The main difference is that in the US, were such a law passed, then tech companies would do some minimum amount of compliance such as requiring that you send a picture of ID or some such and then call it done. If minors manage to get around that by getting photos of their parents ID, well, what is a company to do?
In China the government doesn't care about your excuses. Children are playing your game anyway? Well, we are shutting you down then.
The result is this kind of thing.
Although I totally get your point, I think there's a difference between both laws. "Loot box law" would limit what a company (or any legal person) can do, trying to save some physical person (a child) from some kind of harm (addiction) effected from the company.The "gaming law" limits what the physical person can do with their own time.
I understand how a law that limits third-parties (and mostly, companies) is perceived different than a law that limits the self (or invades the responsibilities of the parents inside a family).
In the US there are frequent stories about how ML works well on white men, but not, e.g., African Americans and I think Asian Americans. There was that Twitter spat between Timnit Gebru and Andrej Karpathy about this subject, and whether it's "just" training data or inherent in ML, partly because of who runs the analyses and who the wealthy consumers are, etc. Having trained some models and fiddled with hyperparameters myself, I could see the argument that it's a little more than just the training data; for example, how the algorithm uses contrast or what kind of angles it picks up.
But what I'm curious about is how well this system works here, developed by a Chinese company with Chinese developers for primarily Chinese users. Does it have better accuracy than Google on the same Chinese data set? Does it have worse accuracy on white people than Google?
I imagine the data is not out there, but maybe there's some published research along these lines by Tencent, or others comparing algorithms or models trained on Tencent data sets to the western equivalents?
That said, Baidu and Tencent have datasets of predominantly Asian faces, so their bias should go in the other direction. Being better at Asian faces (probably they do well on white faces because they can pull from typical research databases), and then not so well at Black faces. But this is just a guess. We can't know without seeing the results (which then it is still hard to determine bias because of how results are presented).
My favorite triple fallacy is “We must do something, for the children, even if it just saves one life!”. Where can only consider an action and inaction or other action can’t possibly be right, if it’s for children it must be righteous, and all costs are outweighed by one precious life even though the effect could be greater elsewhere - usually without infringing on people’s rights. This is the plea of the scoundrel that can not win an argument on fact or merit.
Lincoln wrote, in reference to abolition, that he “[would rather move] to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” [0] But the irony is that hypocrisy drove him and this nation to emancipation, and an improved iteration of the city on a hill.
0 - http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/speed.h...
The hypocrisy Lincoln is talking about didn't lead his nation to emancipation, they delayed emancipation by over a hundred years. Emancipation was going to happen much earlier otherwise.
There is no claim to moral superiority here. I live in the west and I guarantee you the government has facial recognition trained on me, access to public camera and to my phones' camera any time they please, and access to my voice prints. So I don't see why I should feel superior. I don't like lying to myself.
They were then visited on the weekend for eight hours for intense interviews to make sure he wasn’t involved in the ‘government criticism’. He says this is a regular situation.
If you think this is a routine thing in America, you might be mistaken, but it is very routine in China.
If you don’t think comparing average situations is related at all to average moral differences in political systems, you might be mistaken. I can see how being trained in moral relativism would lead to this conclusion though…
The difference is that of intent. The US government isn't fine with you protesting because they respect your right to threaten the power of the interests they represent, it's because they know that your protest will do literally nothing to threaten them.
Wheras in China, the government is much more susceptible to being negatively affected for protests.
When push comes to shove, if you actually do threaten the interests of the US Government, you will be killed or exiled. We saw this happen multiple times throughout US history.
In your view, citizens of the US never visit or are visited by agents of some level of government?
In your view, the US government is not the collection of disparate power bases we see but actually a hidden monolithic “they,” with a discrete “intent” that is a composition of unspecified but doubtless nefarious interest groups?
In your view, China’s government is susceptible to radical yet peaceful change because of organized protest?
In your view, China’s government would never suppress organized protest? Or - perhaps - it suppresses protest because it would lead to change, and your view is that this is a more honest tyranny, echoing the Lincoln quote?
In your view, American local and federal governments have never reformed themselves, the variance of state laws, abolition, prohibition, the repeal of prohibition, civil rights and the expansion minority rights all being meaningless mirages? In your view this is because every hint of actual change is met with assassination or exile for some single protestor who matters more than every other?
If I’ve understood correctly, and with respect, I find these assertions absurd.
The US government is a collection of a few, not that many, disparate power bases that nonetheless have extreme similarities. Which is why, for example, COINTELPRO was a bipartisan effort.
The Chinese government is absolutely susceptible to radical change because of organized protest. Not peaceful, because violence would get involved, but the disintegration can be put into gear as a result of peaceful protest. I don't see why this is absurd, it happened to the USSR that had a political system that is identical to China.
And yes, the Chinese tyranny is honest, they tell you upfront that they will suppress protest as long as it threatens a few key points, and they generally stick to it.
The American local and federal governments have never done radical reforms without violence or the threat of violence. I don't see prohibition as a radical reform, and neither is the relatively inconsequent expansions of minority rights except for the 60s and 70s, which definitely involved the threat of violence.
I'm not claiming that no change can be done from popular will - neither in the US nor in China, though more can be done in the US. I'm claiming that radical change that threaten the shared interests of the power base will, in both cases, be opposed by lethal force. And they will.
And no, this isn't limited to single protestors. The US National Guard has opened fire and bombed whole crowds in the beginning of the 20th century when organized labour was a threat, and figureheads of protests were and almost definitely still are subjected to intense surveillance and often threats or even actual violence - it's absolutely not a single protestor that is effected, it's everyone in the US.
But yes, if you state the assertions without the necessary nuance they sound absurd. This is a discussion that requires a lot of nuance and it would be nice if we could steelman each other.
Our most important difference, I think, is around the significance and value of the hypocrisy of an ostensibly liberal system which nonetheless quietly affords the powerful with easy access to state-backed violence in the protection of their interests.
In my view, the presence of this hypocrisy is an abiding reminder to the civitas of the possibility of stable and positive change. It is the promise that such change will reaffirm, not diminish, the essence of one's culture and tradition. Just as a sinning Catholic retains the possibility of redemption by honoring their professed beliefs, a hypocritical yet liberal society has ready-made the justification and mechanism for reform. The nation may repent from its despotism and is naturally pressured to do so; what tyranny does exist must be hidden and so is neutered.
Take the French: since 1789 they have always managed to found a new, and hopefully slightly better, republic, even after interludes of imperial lunacy or foreign invasion. If you'll permit me to say so, their nation cannot escape from the hypocrisy of ruling by absolutism a people conscious of their own rights. In the extreme, this means violence, but in the smaller battles of society and change this means free protest, politics, voting, and yelling, as in America. Much - most - of the noise is in vain, but not always, and not in the matter of the most preciously held freedoms. To simplify: there, the state sins and fears the discovery of the people; in China the people sin and fear the discovery of the state.
I often feel in discussions like this that I am defending Americans from the charge of ignorance. We speak so loudly of our ideals that we perhaps beg for an insult to our intelligence, just as a common self-righteous blowhard would (hello).
And - by the fact of our empire our leaders' words carry an implicit threat, even when they speak to a laudable ideal. In the subtext I feel I am arguing for the existence of this empire. I feel I am arguing that the empire is a utilitarian good despite the arch-hypocrisy of the tyrannical, violent realpolitik that built it. I am not - though I am sure we would disagree ardently there as well.
There are many career paths in Germany, so one could think that this might not really be an issue, but he also started messing up the alternatives. Now with Corona he is in a full limbo.
And this is only close family, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a more widespread issue, so I do appreciate if methods are sought after to avoid these kind of unnecessary problems, which are just a manifestation of bad parenting, but having a camera with an AI behind it watching your every step or possibly listening into your daily life feels like the wrong approach. It is scary.
I am an Eastern-educated immigrant who lives in the West. Honestly, I believe freedom is important in a lot of things. However, allowing companies like Coca Cola, Heineken, Robinhood, Youtube and Facebook to operate in the name of giving everyone freedom is one of the worst decisions in the Western world. These companies have exploited human biases to an extent at which our freedom is a manipulated freedom which works according to how they want.
The Western concept of freedom above everything is a joke in modern society. It is based on the premise that everyone is smart enough to take decisions for themselves. However, due to inherent human biases, this is practically impossible. What this false assumption leads to is companies like Coca Cola, Heineken (or whatever other alcohol brands are popular), Facebook essentially ruling how we spend our time, money, health and energy. The Western concept of freedom above everything else is flawed
That's a misconception. The actual reasoning is that:
1. Everyone is equal in rights and responsibilities.
2. Those who use their rights wisely bring more value than the cost of decisions of those who don't.
For some things 2. doesn't hold, so they're regulated. Motoring in general comes to mind as an example.
Beyond that, #1 is factually incorrect, Facebook has positive rights that you don't, and #2 almost never holds starting from the realization that you're assuming that profit is inherently wise and that maximizing profit almost always requires the maximization of externatility. So using your rights wisely to your maximum advantage essentially never brings the most value.
How value is defined in the last sentence doesn't matter, any way of defining value except total profit generation works. But for the sake of the discussion we can say total happiness.
I disagree with your assertion that value not being defined doesn't matter. If it didn't, then your claim of "using your rights wisely to your maximum advantage essentially never brings the most value" would have nothing to stand on. After all, that's a value judgement.
I also take issue with your claim that the max profit generation is somehow irreconcilably divorced from total happiness. Facebook provides a service the people choose to use without guns to their heads. If people are unhappy with using Facebook or are uninvested in it (like myself), they can refuse to use it. If anything, I would arrive at an opposite conclusion: Much like cars and phones, people are satisfied with FB to the point that most are happy to use it, even if it comes with tradeoffs they wouldn't have tolerated in any other context. The user connects with others in a way that works for them and that's engineered to work very well for Facebook's financials. Every party involved is operating to their own standards utilizing their own negative rights to achieve their own ends. That's just business.
"Freedom" as a universal, sacred concept is incompatible with psychologically validated, focus group tested mass marketing, let alone the individually tailored ML stuff that has started to come along in the past 10 years.
If anything, Government power needs to be expanded to combat corporate/political/media special interests. Not arbitrarily, of course, but it might be prudent to expand their power in a way that acts in the public interest - such as increased funding to public broadcasters or independent media watchdogs that can actually enforce journalistic standards with fines.
Moreover, there may be emergent boons in favoring the individual over society and the state. My ability to lead an idiosyncratic life, to make choices which may harm both me and the optimal operation of our society, allows for: subcultures flourishing unimpeded and providing joy to those who would otherwise be ostracized; clever eccentrics pursing new technology or new ways of living and thinking; the resiliency to change inherent in diversity, analogous to evolution.
Finally, I think your critique is less about the freedom of the individual and more the danger of unimpeded free enterprise acting on that freedom with ever improving and ever more terrible Skinner boxes of consumerism. It seems to me the best way to address this plight is not more restrictions on the choices of individuals - eg, spying on children to homogenize their behavior - but more restrictions on businesses. If one argues from the dignity of the individual, there is more room to restrict the freedom of capitalist enterprises than that of an individual human’s choices.
Which as the OP underlined is exactly why advertising for example in the Western economic tradition brings positive utility, because we assume that people know what is useful to them.
Beyond that, it's simply incorrect that our "freedom" means we aren't subordinate to the wills of society - we are, because we require resources to survive which the state has ordained are controlled by other people, which requires ourselves to subordinate to the will of others. No matter how you get around it, as long as you have property you are doomed to live a subordinate life unless you're very lucky. This is a false dichotomy written by people who didn't rid themselves of religious doctrine enough to understand that negative rights cannot exist without a violent state instead of being simply inherent.
Beyond that, limiting restrictions on businesses is philosophically the same as restricting individuals, businesses are simply collections of individuals. Crucially though businesses are already functionally almost completely restricted to the profit motive, but that's an effect of the property system and of the role of the state more than anything else.
I would be curious to hear an elaboration this point.
2. All private property that can be claimed will be claimed before you are born
3. You are now reliant on someone else's private property to survive, creating a relation of subordination.
So, unless you own enough wealth to live passively from, you will have to subordinate to someone else to survive. And empirically, this is true, the vast majority of people need a job, and where I live employment relationships are legally relationships of subordination (French civil law), in the rest of the world it's not de jure but still de facto.
I agree that Coca Cola, amongst others, can suck it. But reducing an individuals freedom as a means to do so is nonsensical.
In the US, the concept of personal freedom is rooted on two principles: 1. Rights restricted or outright lost are difficult, if not impossible to get back, without revolution. 2. Most prefer a reactive government more than a proactive government.
So yes, there is a natural fear about the highest level of government implementing such restrictions, it is generally considered a method of last resort. Local municipalities or simply the family as a social unit have a better understanding and capacity to handle such matters.
Looks like a typical simple solution to a complex problem or, in other words, not a solution.
some giants like Tencent or Huawei or Alibaba, etc are always trying to collect citizens' personal data like your face id, your voices, you phone number, .... everything related to you.
They must act according to the CCP's dictates.
ccp is evil but at least not worse than tencent
But again nothing scary about what Worldcoin, Tencent and others are doing right?
Government: "show me your face or else[1]", me: "r-right away sir"
Perhaps a third choice, that also doesn't require resorting interfering with other people's private choices, with legal threats that emanate from the state's monopoly on violence, is to lobby to allocate a portion of public funds to subsidizing game publishers that respect privacy.
In any case, even a modest portion of the population choosing to avoid privacy-compromising game publishers would establish a market for privacy-preserving games. So this is really a matter of consumers educating themselves and making responsible choices.
The real problem here is likely the state stepping in to force all game publishers who attain Tencent's market reach to institute these kinds of measures.
A collection of people not providing you with games on your terms is not a violation of your rights. You siccing the government on them is a violation of their right to choose for themselves what to work on and on what terms to offer it for sale.
In the admittedly mainstream approach you endorse, the government is acting in contravention of its benevolent purpose, something Frédéric Bastiat wrote about at length 170 years ago:
https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basLaw.html?chapter_...
>>A collection of people not providing you with food on your terms is not a violation of your rights right?
It is not a violation of my rights, but what you described is not that. That would be like if food providers all decided to offer food that is slightly poisoned, and disclosed that the food had been slightly poisoned. You would then have a choice to either take your chances on producing your own food, or taking their poisoned food.
Besides that I think that your viewpoint is completely nuts and no well functioning society could exist like that.
So they are not informed. No court would consider that sufficient disclosure of a poison additive. Common law can't be evaded by resorting to technicalities as in your caricature.
Its basis is informed consent, and that incorporates all of the context that goes into making a determination of whether that's present, including custom, reasonable assumptions, etc.
Notice what distinguishes your "fine print" hypothetical from the scenario I described:
This is a company offering a game with terms of services clearly spelled out to you, with you free to accept or reject their offer with full knowledge of what they are offering.
Note: "clearly spelled out to you" and "full knowledge of what they are offering"
Not "fine print", with the implication that no one is reading it.
>>Besides that I think that your viewpoint is completely nuts and no well functioning society could exist like that.
You have not explained why you think this, so this is not a particularly constructive track of discussion.
It's in court where both parties get a chance to make their case and have it decided by an impartial party, based on the balance of evidence.
Tencent is doing this verification because the law of the land in China says they have to. If other companies in China don’t employ the same measures, it’s only a matter of time before they will as well.
My inclination is to assume this is compelled by the Chinese state.
Games were an anonymous chat outlet before, so they are closing on that now with radical actions.
Now I believe they will be feeding game chats to their version of PRISM, and want to tie them to reliable real world identities.
Basically, chicoms want to close any way for a chat message to not to have a reliable ID matched to it.
The apologetics for corporate-government fascism digust me. No, it's not okay for the ruling class to contract out their oppression to corporations any more than it is for them to use the government for that purpose.
This is how the internet has been for as long as I remember. When you use a website, you agree to its rules. Do people truly believe they are oppressed over this?
You're okay if the government privatizes certain "problematic" services it provides and allows the now private organization to violate peoples' rights?
except it's laptop only and only applies to systems sold by OEMs. Speaking of which, when was the last time you saw a laptop that didn't have a webcam? Laptops were pretty common even on low-mid tier laptops from the early 00s. For fun let's also exclude the niche laptops like pinebook or what have you, because I doubt buyers of those laptops need the OEM to pre-install windows for them.
Asus Zephyrus G14. I see it as a safety feature.
My work laptop has a built-in camera cover, but I don't remember to keep it open/closed.
That's just it. It's already extremely common so why would you even need to require it? Who cares about 99% market penetration vs 100%? Consumers? Game devs? No they are fine with 99%. The only actor who cares about the difference is the government.
This is a more competent telescreen.
Our government don't access 'our' tech without permission. But hang on, is this or is this not 'meta-data'?
Anyway, with coronavirus, its a must-have. We need our governments to track our moves in order to monitor vectors of attack.
We need this tech - why can't we roll it out here?!
/s
Well it can, but not easily
Right, but that ability is limited to them. If I want to opt out of the tracking, all I have to do is shop at another store, or wait until they forget. Worst case I can flee to another town. On the other hand the tencent surveillance botnet is (or will be) omnipresent. You won't be able to avoid it because they'll have cameras everywhere.
>but I probably wouldn't want them to know my credit card number.
Maybe not at a store, but handing your credit card to the waiter at a restaurant is still pretty common.
Until recently it was quite normal that stores wouldn't let you in if you were covering your face.
> Maybe not at a store, but handing your credit card to the waiter at a restaurant is still pretty common.
WTF? Not where I live it isn't. Even pre-Corona people knew not to let someone else touch your card.
The point isn't that you can cover your face, it's that the recognition ability is limited to that one employee at the store. That means if you don't want to be recognized you can go to another store/town (yes, your face is still visible but unless you're starting a commotion you'll be forgotten in less than 24 hours).
I believe this is one of those things that's almost exclusively an Americanism. Where I live (Australia) you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that would ever eat at the restaurant again if the waiter tried to take their card.