China has pioneered a law to empower people over algorithms?
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
Is this the beginning of a world optimized for well-being instead of engagement?
Looking at Google results that clearly favor media outlets compared to any other content, something similar could maybe bring back better search results. I am amazed that Google sabotages their primary product in such a way.
Better search won't change that. If the current state of search is trying to find the one independent needle in a pile of commercially produced hay, imagine how it will be when the farmer didn't hire someone to shovel all the manure out of the barn.
I'd like a button or option to tone down how much a video influences the recommendation. Not ignore since I obviously wanted to watch it but I don't need 500 videos of various scenes in a film just because one popped in my head and I just wanted to see that.
I am too cynical to believe this. Would be nice though.
Unfortunately, the answer is whomever is in power.
I can describe how I'd set one up, to guarantee personal freedoms and human rights, and reasonable systems of governance, but at the end of the day, I think "whomever is in power" will make better decisions about human well-being than the invisible hand of capitalism.
I think China has some elements of the right approach:
- Free markets for mass-produced commodities.
- Socialized banks, resources, real estate, and other rent-collecting industries.
- A hybrid for tech and information
On the whole, I am glad for China. I like having multiple systems, and unlike many others, I feel like the government is trying very hard to improve, and sometimes succeeding.
However, I think your view of it as closer to a utopia is a little disconnected from reality. The US is still a nicer place to live than China, unless you're a tourist. The gap has closed rapidly, but it's still there.
I think each system has upsides and downsides. I'm glad for having multiple systems. I hope they can learn from each other. The Chinese concepts of meritocracy, family, and long-term planning, as well as the emphasis on education, would go a long ways here. I also like what's socialized and what isn't. I like weak IP laws and contracts; I think China's in the right place there now (I wouldn't have said so a few years back, where it was the wild west)
The US still has lower corruption. The US is much more transparent. I also don't like the way Chinese politicians are kinda dicks, openly insulting the US. Then there's issues like Tibet, Honk Kong, Taiwan, and the Uighurs, as well as mass surveillance (although the US is not much better on the last one, as of late).
I feel like at some point, China might find a chill government who will let a lot of those slide or move into a more balanced position.
I hope they do. I can see path for China to really become closer to a utopia than virtually any other place right now.
What are you requesting be done to you if you are found to be truant from your mandatory education? That's the other side of laws that seems to be ignored in these kinds of proposals.
With classes, I guess I don't advance in my career as much.
Critically, society would be structured with room for this, and a place I'm expected to be without distraction.
A utopia for non-minorities, you mean? Because the 1930s were not necessarily a pleasant time for everyone involved.
That's when communism and fascism were sparring with democracy in Europe, China had the Kuomintang and CCP visions, the Soviet system was new, and so on. There was a lot of interesting political thought.
Fundamentally all you're saying is that you're a child who needs to be told what to do. That is not compelling.
The solution you're looking for is to grow up. You don't need a totalitarian government to do that for you. You can get that done on your own.
> I can describe how I'd set one up, to guarantee personal freedoms and human rights, and reasonable systems of governance
Maybe just do what Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are doing. They're not perfect, but they sound more like what you want while also allowing you to be an adult.
I'm managing several major projects, and I like having a project manager tell me what to do. Before that, I had an admin to boss me around. At some point, I figured out that scheduling and planning all this stuff is no fun. If I wake up, and have a calendar of meetings, or a big block of time for writing, or whatever, I am much happier than if I'm planning it myself. If I have a project, deadlines are nice. I set them, but an RPM or admin can harass me to make sure I remember them and meet them.
My project manager, and before that, my admin, report to me. It's not totalitarian at all.
I don't see why a government needs to be totalitarian to structure my life. I think everyone should have a free basic home. I also think everyone should be welcome to buy a nicer home if they choose.
However, the system will fall apart if it's mandatory for all. People will shirk their 32-hour work week, do the bare minimum for 8 hours mandatory education (e.g. clicking through modules super fast, or Googling all of the answers), make their own video games (which would be great), go through the motions of mandatory exercise, brew alcohol, grow or synthesize drugs, and create their own social network, even via amateur radio.
The counter-culture sounds a lot more fun. Also, the utopia is incompatible with people with dreams of becoming game developers, people who critique expensive wine, and people who spend a variable amount of time self-learning on their own, versus fixed hours.
The imposition of how a person spends their time is a separate principle from guarantees of a job (an income guarantee is preferred, because a lot of people will effectively and potentially rationally do the bare minimum/no work at the job), housing, food, and medical care.
Its a global truth that corruption and tyranny is always a risk, but the amount of that risk varries with the solution proposed, and there are plenty of ways it could be mitigated to varrying degrees.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
The standard solution of course is to divide up power and create checks and balances amongst trusted groups.
The american constitution wasn't designed around the idea that slaves were supposed to be fairly dealt with by the government
For example, with facebook, a good user experience would be turning off the algorithmic feed results in a purely temporal one with all your existing filters in place. I highly doubt facebook is going to reimplement a temporal feed to give people a viable option for turning off the feed they want them to use.
So my prediction is nothing will change because the algorithms disabled option will intentionally be a very poor experience designed to make you immediately turn the algorithms back on.
I assume in China where they can just jail the CEO on bull shit charges they'll definitely put in a good faith effort.
No, it is not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
It's amazing to me how easily people "forget" the actual UN-recognized religious holocaust that is happening right now, while praising its architects.
But if you observe some recent laws you'll see that the government sometimes does do things that are (what it thinks) is good for its citizens. For example there was a recent law limiting gaming hours for children. Agree or disagree with the implementation, a state can simultaneously be doing terrible things while also trying to do good things. Governments are not a monolithic unit.
Ah! So when enough people disagree with the government then the solution is to change the government! You can change the government in China, right?
Right?
Black Mirror IRL. I'm sure the app is so popular because people install it voluntarily...
It's scary to think that an autocratic government has the power to influence the thoughts and actions of 1.4bn people. The US may spend an exorbitant amount on its defense budget, but the CCP can effectively weaponize the entire population on a whim, which somehow seems even scarier.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-defence-...
If you don't know what a Hukou is, or you don't know about the need to check in with a party representative when you move cities in China (and check in with the police for foreigners) then you should find out (note foreigners can't stay in most hotels, because many don't have procedures in place to track them). If you haven't already seen that you can be jailed for using a VPN in China, or posting material "against the party", then I suspect you're not really interested.
Go find out on Weibo 自干五.
In what way exactly was what I asked for broad? Please, I want to hold you to this point.
In my experience, people like you are incapable of backing up your claims with the barest minimum of hard evidence, and you try to cover that fact up with a shotgun spray (or another kind of spray) of narratives and an uppity, condescending affectation. I’m not impressed.
Anyone observing what’s going on within the US-centric Internet right now should be able to understand dispassionately how China benefited from creating the conditions for its own national tech companies to develop. No US company can suddenly shut off mobile payments infrastructure within China, for instance.
It depends on who it is "positive" and "good" for. For the society, the government, or the user?
I would like to see algorithms that focus on the user. For that you want to have algorithms that are understandable and controllable by the user.
Unfortunately, this is not compatible with the algorithms employed for recommendations today. They use neural networks that are hard to understand not only to the users but to the developers of these systems.
Look at the abuse prevention technique used by DALL-E 2 [1]: "Our content policy does not allow users to generate violent, adult, or political content, among other categories. We won’t generate images if our filters identify text prompts and image uploads that may violate our policies."
I worry that the algorithm regulation will focus on forcing recommendation systems to use similar controls and then those who control the filters of what is "not good" will effectively control what is acceptable to learn and talk about.
I'd like to propose an alternative - design the recommendation algorithm that gives control to the user to decide what is good for them. I'm building https://linklonk.com as an experiment in this area and the algorithm is detailed here: https://linklonk.com/item/3292763817660940288
In the western world the vast majority of people I know already have zero issues being tracked, advertised to, recommended to, and generally manipulated for "engagement" and profit. A weak law, passed too early and without widespread cultural significance would serve only to give a tighter, more insidious grip on a typical used's view of media, music, and reality in general.
The vast majority of people have no thought out opinion on the matter. They have no idea how much data is gathered about them, how it's sold and how it's used. Ignorance is not the same as affirmation.
This is kinda the entire point of their social credit system.
I know HN has a lot of people who subscribe to beliefs in the same ballpark as "people are stupid and need to be helped" but rest assured, people are well aware that they're getting bent over when it comes to their data.
It's all value-based judgements. Entirely subjective laws. What is "disinformation", "manipulate user accounts", or "convenient option"?
The answer to all those things "Whatever the hell the regime feels like".
Meaning that if you want to avoid being accused of not providing a "convenient-enough option to turn off the algorithmic recommendation service" then you have to keep the Chinese politicians happy with you and your company. Essentially whether or not you are breaking the law depends on their perception/how pleased they are of what you are doing.
Keep in mind that we are dealing with a totalitarian regime. Their idea of things like "false news" is going to be any history that does not align with their communist agenda. Such as covid probably originated from a research facility in Wuhan, that Mao's rise to power involved slaughtering peasants, or that something untoward happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
This isn't to "protect users" it's to provide yet another legislative club they can use to force western corporations to give the government ever increasing concessions.
The real change here is making it easier to enact soft censorship. If you want less people talking about a topic, right now the primary tool is outright censorship by the state. I think what the CCP wants is to let people post on a subject, but nobody sees your post, with a net effect that the subject falls out of public discourse without being outright censored.
I don't disagree with the premise of people > algorithm, just noting the almost strange disconnect between it and the underlying polity and its tendencies.
If you start with the assumption that Chinese government is trying to do good for its citizens, those are straight forward decisions.
CCTV protects people from street crime; credit score seems to provide tremendous value in establishing trust between strangers, let's build a better version; people > algorithms, let's regulate the latter.
A benevolent authoritarian government could be very efficient and good, but we still reject authoritarianism because it is bad.
Why would anyone do that given treatment of Uyghurs?
From the Chinese perspective, what their government is doing to the Uyghurs is justified because terrorist separatist muslims. And anyway, from the Chinese perspective, nothing really bad is happening to the Uyghurs anyway, they're just being reformed into good citizens.
Completely without any sort of consequences in the world.
US chose to bomb Afghanistan into the ground, China chose to establish very strict social controls. Both are terribly inhumane to innocent people in those regions, but what are real alternatives?
Wikipedia lists a steady stream of domestic terrorism incidents involving Uighurs [0]. It seems like the Chinese government only has one tool in their toolbox--control--so apparently their solution is to eliminate the entire ethnicity, although my prediction is that ultimately that will increase the amount of attacks, because now the entire population has a (concrete) grievance as opposed to a few radicalized ones.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Chronology_...
No, I'm seeing it through taking a series of factually established premises, and comparing them. Critical thinking (however anecdotally a position one launches from) isn't a byproduct of "Western Media".
"If you start with the assumption that Chinese government is trying to do good for its citizens, those are straight forward decisions." Are they?
"CCTV protects people from street crime" ...or just makes investing in ski masks popular? Your statement is so absent any context (who has access to the CCTV, what legal recourse is there for auditing the footage from a privacy or legal evidentiary perspective), are there controls to prevent abuse, etc.
I said nothing of a credit score. I said a social score, which is a very different, and much more contentious issue: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-e...
Most people consider themselves critical thinkers, but subconsciously apply a bias on the sources they read.
For instance they would go to depth on and apply every single possible suspicion on news that are against their perception, or failing that, just simply labeling it as 'false news'. At the same time, news or information that conforms to their bias are accepted as truth usually without any questions asked.
It's alarming because most of the time it is worth a lot more to think critically of the news that conforms to what you believe - because you are already critical of those that are against it by default. That is what true critical thinking is.
That said, the threshold for lazy loading bias can be significantly different for people, and trying to become a Vulcan-Mentat combo might not be the most ideal goal. Actually applying some real rigor and not just resorting to convenient heuristics (e.g. "Western media", "MSM" , "leftist" or "rightist" or several other "ists" reflexively) usually is a good start.
" most of the time it is worth a lot more to think critically of the news that conforms to what you believe"
Agreed.
Please explain how the continued lockdown in Shanghai is “the Chinese government” doing good for its citizens vs. not wanting to lose face on an absurd zero covid policy?
It basically wants to be the single source of truth in the country, but algorithms interfere with this goal by providing "bubbles" to users. Once a person falls into a bubble, his view will start diverging from what CCP wants their people to see, causing instability inside the society. This is obviously a huge threat to their authority.
Basically all Chinese in cities at least can also speak English. So they get Chinese and English news. Most people in the west cannot read anything other than English.
Who really has the blinkered view? Remember the human brain believes things it hears often even when you know it's bs eg conspiracy theories
Basically all Chinese in cities at least can also speak English. So they get Chinese and English news. Most people in the west cannot read anything other than English.
Who really has the blinkered view? Remember the human brain believes things it hears often even when you know it's bs eg conspiracy theories
Take your pick on where any figure fits, but its very possible for it to "make sense"
>"“Algorithmic recommendation service providers shall...:”
Art 6: “… actively disseminate positive energy, and promote the application of algorithms to be good.”
Art 8: “… not set up algorithm models that induce users to indulge in addiction, excessive consumption, etc. …”
Art 13: “… not generate synthetic false news information or disseminate it. …”
Art 14: “… not use algorithms to falsely register accounts, illegal transaction accounts, manipulate user accounts, or falsely like, comment, or forward …”
Art 16: “… notify users in a conspicuous manner of their provision of algorithmic recommendation services, and publicize the basic principles, purposes, and main operating mechanisms …”
Articles 18 and 19 are similar but emphasize the particularities of minors and the elderly — demographics that have very particular needs and requirements (e.g. minors shouldn’t have easy access to unsafe content and elders have specific medical necessities).
Art 17: “… provide users with options that are not tailored to their personal characteristics, or provide users with a convenient option to turn off the algorithmic recommendation service. …”"
I think CCP realized that any too-big-to-fall or too influential entity threatened CCP as a big organization even under tight control still provides an alternative that may very quickly become problematic for the government. With smaller entities the option just to shut down them is very effective way to deal with them.
They genuinely care for people and are doing this for their people's best: it comes on the heels of similar laws targeting addictive online gaming and restricting students access to this around a year ago. It's not about a battle between big tech and government for control (a decidedly Western projection), it's more China being innovative about the real threat to people's well being that tracking, and optimized recommendation can do. We know the threat in the West, just our system cannot do anything about it, because of the "freedom" of liberal democracy's lobbying system's and free market principles. The central government is acting on this because they can. Like most everything CPC does, it is an experiment: e.g, Hainan FTP is the nation's "biggest testing ground for addressing institutional weak links" and "Hainan plays the role of a testing ground for China's opening-up and helps ensure economic security" [2].
If you want to consider second order affects of this flex/ability, here's my take: They have the mandate, the political will, and the real power to enact these experiments / innovative reforms and this is another. Their governing system is constantly evolving. That flexibility is why I think they will win, if you want to compare governing systems: they can simply afford to take more risks, and thereby iterate/zero-in on more correct solutions by exploring the state space of governance, more effectively than less flexibile/more brittle/more stymied-by-existing power-players, "Western liberal democracies". It's good for China, and sad for the West, but I think it's a teachable moment for the West: that I hope can encourage/inspire the West's own period of "reform and opening up"
[1]: Tho understandable from a Western PoV given combative rhetoric of late--it does seem insecure, right? Tho that point is more a voice that wants to be in command of how it is narrated, rather than have Western propaganda (driven by the West's own insecurities about China) misrepresent it
“It fits the current Western media narrative but misses the the point if you view every CPC action as security against threats to its control.[1]
They genuinely care for people and are doing this for their people's best: it comes on the heels of similar laws targeting addictive online gaming and restricting students access to this around a year ago. It's not about a battle between big tech and government for control (a decidedly Western projection), it's more China being innovative about the real threat to people's well being that tracking, and optimized recommendation can do. We know the threat in the West, just our system cannot do anything about it, because of the "freedom" of liberal democracy's lobbying system's and free market principles. The central government is acting on this because they can. Like most everything CPC does, it is an experiment: e.g, Hainan FTP is the nation's "biggest testing ground for addressing institutional weak links" and "Hainan plays the role of a testing ground for China's opening-up and helps ensure economic security" [2].
If you want to consider second order affects of this flex/ability, here's my take: They have the mandate, the political will, and the real power to enact these experiments / innovative reforms and this is another. Their governing system is constantly evolving. That flexibility is why I think they will win, if you want to compare governing systems: they can simply afford to take more risks, and thereby iterate/zero-in on more correct solutions by exploring the state space of governance, more effectively than less flexibile/more brittle/more stymied-by-existing power-players, "Western liberal democracies". It's good for China, and sad for the West, but I think it's a teachable moment for the West: that I hope can encourage/inspire the West's own period of "reform and opening up"
[1]: Tho understandable from a Western PoV given combative rhetoric of late--it does seem insecure, right? Tho that point is more a voice that wants to be in command of how it is narrated, rather than have Western propaganda (driven by the West's own insecurities about China) misrepresent it
Please explain how the continued lockdown in Shanghai is doing good for its citizens vs. not wanting to lose face on an absurd zero covid policy as a way to secure political points?
Not to be semantic but this can be measured very differently depending on who you ask, and if someone's objective function has deaths weighing much more heavily than personal freedom (actually not an insignificant amount of people in the US as well subscribe to this for covid) then yea that is "good". Else I'm unaware of a universal agreed upon definition of the best tradeoff to make.
In fact, it seems like the height of arrogance to think China is making decisions about its greatest city with Western opinion in mind.
My main question is that it seems very hard to distinguish between a legitimate recommendation system and a system that is designed to capture your attention. For instance, I like being able to see related items on Amazon when evaluating a purchase. That recommendation empowers me as a consumer. China can afford to make the law vague because the regulator will never be challenged in its interpretation. That wouldn't work elsewhere, I think.
That being said, not all is great. China grants rights to people over their data while making it clear that they don't own any of it. This legislation is part of a broader regulatory framework designed to give the state a true monopoly free of all limits. This should give us pause.
Speechless. There is plenty of evidence to counter this point. China already tracks what every citizen does.
The author comes off as a pundit for the CCP.
What do you suppose the said algo _uses_, hmm? Perhaps the data captured by the government?
They aren't separate, in fact in the case of regulations, the subjects are deeply intertwined with each other: The introduction of "allowed algorithms" is a clear sign that the government in question has a vested interest in controlling the information feeds of their population.
Slippery slope be damned, it creates a path for the government to say:
"Hey, we want you to use this algorithm instead & set it as the default: Nothing suspicious, just use it. ;)"
Even if the algorithm in question is just "sort by newest", the fact that a body of control is exerting influence on which algorithms are allowed & what is the default algorithm to be used sets a precedence of control that results in more power being sent to the government: Don't like the algorithms being used? Have the government solve it!
This is simple groundwork to ensure that CCP can dictate what people are allowed to engage with on the CCPs terms. “Positive” here is whatever the government says it is.
Who defines what "good" or "positive energy"? Who defines what is fake news? Does providing users information that is "not tailored to their personal characteristics" mean that it's, instead, tailored to the state's preferences?
The language of the law sounds nice and there are aspects that probably meet goals that are not necessarily harmful to people (e.g. Addicted people are less productive, so avoiding addiction is good for the state as well as the individual), but it definitely could be used by a state to control what people see online. That's political control of media.
If you wouldn't be concerned if this passed under Biden, how about if it were passed under Trump? Remember what he called "fake news"? How much more should we be concerned about it being passed in China, where state control over media is absolute?
e.g. Anything involving the Tienanmen square massacre is virtually guaranteed to be classified as "fake news", "not good", or "not conducive of positive energy" by this law. How do companies like facebook ensure they're compliant with the law then? Censorship.
This isn't good news. This is absolutely dystopian.
As for what the article is saying: "the option to disable recomm. systems"; Well my statements still apply: companies would supposedly have to abide by this law, whereas the government would still use them to control the population. A feed system in tiktok would be disabled but a feed system for the government showing "problematic citizens" (which is exactly the same) would still apply, you just won't know about it. Thus the hypocrisy, thus the blank words; But it helps portray them as some kind of pioneers in cyber-ethics, which is funny to say the least.
this is the CCP, pure comedy
[1] https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/zt/zfbps/t125236.htm#
China has a history of running propeganda/promotion campaigns including running them as ads at the beginning of YouTube videos to get the first word in as an attempt to control the narrative.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbKSswCwEMg&ab_channel=Jerry...
When it comes to US, Americans are blind that they are being tracked too, while it isn't clear if China's so called score systems affect the average citizen, credit scores in US aren't any better.
Also the tech industry banning all kind of political dissidents, them losing their jobs, etc... even a potential employer Googling you doesn't sound right to me.
If the West and East are having the same outcomes, but the overlords are different being corpos in the West and party officials in the East.
Are the courts independent enough to even utilize this law?
From the chinese affair office in lithuania : "The Constitution provides for a wide range of political rights to citizens. In addition to the right to vote and to be elected mentioned above, citizens also enjoy freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration. There is no news censorship in China." [1]
[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-human-... [1] https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/zt/zfbps/t125236.htm#
There is no war in Ba Sing Se; we have never been at war with Eastasia
- Term "wellness" is so highly depend on context, that it will mean anything, what decide judge. - Depend on point of look, for wellness could decide to give somebody food/water or to kill him, so he will not agonize.
On what I must agree, this classic totalitarian legislation, will have extremely long tail of consequences.
For example, judge could decide, that for abstract wellness, bank algorithm should not account fees on officials accounts (including their relatives), or they could decide, that for officials accounts, 2*2=5.
Like any country, China has a balance of power in internal politics.
If we’re talking about those at the top (e.g. Xi), there’s really no need for this law to interpret 2+2=5; he’s the dictator and already can take whatever he wants.
For lower officials, maybe they want 2+2=5, but those above them want to keep them in check to make themselves look good, except in so far as the lower officials have something to offer in return. But even if that lower official is paying the upper official to look the other way, if the lower official pisses off too many people higher up the chain then there’s no way to avoid the consequences.
This is the game and balance of power as it exists today, and that doesn’t change with some social media law.
The main change here is giving CCP more tools to shape public discourse.
you’re correct that “wellness” can mean anything. If some app has too many posts criticizing Shanghai lockdown, tell the app it’s not promoting wellness, fix it with algorithms or go to jail.
In other words, a softer version of great firewall censorship: you are “allowed” to post on a topic, but maybe nobody will see your post because it’s not promoting wellness
Your model missing important thing - logistics.
- Logistics is so much huge factor, that in reality, large totalitarian country usually become Neo-feudalism, meaning, typical local official is at so large distance from totalitarian center, that he could do with their subordinates near anything, effectively become local prince.
- Lower effective in small countries (Singapore), in large lower become local.
And China is LARGE country, even with modern technologies, it is divided to provinces, which have significantly different behaviors. So they will have in one province 2+2=5, in other could be 2+2=6, and in third 2+2=7, etc.
Adding rules accepting wide specter of interpretations, make things more totalitarian. This is in fact payment of central government to local officials. I only can't at the moment figure out, for what they pay locals, but there not much variants - most probably they prepare to invade Taiwan.
BTW, in democracy countries also provinces different, but they not trying to hide this information, so we know these sadly facts. And Chinese totalitarian power constantly spend huge resources to hide truth, and you believe for their lie.
I would assume that enforcing such a law is extremely hard. The cynical part of me assumes that the unclear regulations will be used to silence companies and individuals that do not match the governments ideology. But I still think that many countries would be well adviced to include something similar in their legislation.
Over the last few years the language has changed from growth in a quantitative sense to a qualitative sense. Equity is a big concern in China nowadays with high levels of inequality, even old Communist sentiments reemerging in particular online among poorer demographics, 'ethics', 'reasonable corporate behavior' are phrases that nowadays pop up often in laws and party publications as well.
I think people should be cautiously optimistic about this because the fact that China is passing laws with real teeth that take welfare in a broad sense into account rather than just continuing with brute growth even if it hurts stock valuations short term is an indicator that governance is able to take a somewhat longer look.
Consider that for the past 5-10 years we in the west have been bombarded with anti-Chinese news stories, and "red danger" is reaching new, dizzying heights; propaganda works both ways.