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> TikTok (Douyin) also operates in China. No kid is spared.

Can’t vouch for the following observation, since I’ve never used either one, but:

"In their version of TikTok, if you're under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos," said Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

"And they also limit it to only 40 minutes per day. Now they don't ship that version of TikTok to the rest of the world. So it's almost like they recognize that technology's influencing kids' development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,"

https://thepostmillennial.com/tiktoks-chinese-platform-enric...

Any kind of amusing content for kids is time restricted in china. If a western game company wants to get into the market, they need to implement time limits & age checks.

Are they linked at all? Otherwise if you add up all the time limits they must exceed a day...

Yes, they're linked by some form of government ID. Of course, it's probably very easy to get around that in some manner by just playing offline games or using a parent's ID.

The question is asking about multiple apps coordinating.

Wouldn’t this require a central database and an API for querying/updating time spent in an app per ID? Where is that API?

Yes that's what I meant, the apps coordinate by being linked to some government ID. At least that's what I've heard.

I am quite skeptical of this. There would have to be an API. There would have to be documentation for that. There would likely be keys assigned to individual apps.

Couldn't they just send the government 'ID #11111 has played our game for 30 minutes' and 'ID#11111 is requesting a login how much time do they have left' and let the gov track the specifics

Of course they could. It would obviously be an enormous security problem. Apps would have to know the government ID of children. Nefarious entities could stage denial-of-service attacks against individuals.

Obviously China could do this. I am skeptical of the claim presented as hearsay without evidence.

If such a system exists, there should be easily found documentation for it.

"In addition, minors were required to use their real names and national identification numbers when they logged on to play and companies like Tencent and NetEase (9999.HK), set up systems to identify minors.

In July, Tencent rolled out a facial recognition function dubbed "midnight patrol" that parents can switch on to prevent children from using adult logins to get around the government curfew."

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/why-how-china-is-drastic...

That does not support the claim that apps are coordinating to restrict usage.

"in 2019, it passed laws limiting minors to less than 1.5 hours of online games on weekdays and three hours on weekends, with no game playing allowed between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. It also limited how much minors could spend on virtual gaming items each month, with maximum amounts ranging from $28 to $57, depending on the age."

How could this be done without coordination?

In addition: "One of the first systems required by the government was launched in 2005 to regulate adolescents' Internet use, including limiting daily gaming time to 3 hours and requiring users' identification in online video games.[134] In 2007, an "Online Game Anti-Addiction System" was implemented for minors, restricting their use to 3 hours or less per day. " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China

Yes, coordination between apps would be the hard part and I see no evidence that it exists. There is a lot of writing in English that does not point to anything canonical from China. It does not make clear exactly what obligations are placed on app developers. I remain skeptical that coordination between applications is happening.

I would love to see any evidence of this. It should be easy if it exists as there would be documentation telling app developers how to use the central database. I would imagine an ecosystem of libraries would exist to make it easier for app developers to satisfy these obligations.

This is a country that has "great firewall", social credit system for all citizens with centralized API etc. It's not a problem for them to create an API for this.

I agree it would be no problem. It would obviously be an enormous security problem. Apps would have to know the government ID of children. Nefarious entities could stage denial-of-service attacks against individuals.

Obviously China could do this. I am skeptical of the claim presented as hearsay without evidence.

If such a system exists, there should be easily found documentation for it.

I keep hearing about a "social credit system for all citizens" but have never seen evidence of its existence.

They do this. Basically everything runs straight through wechat, as if the facebook appstore hadn't lost relevance. Wechat is the api in most cases. You can even go to court on it.

Every app is using WeChat? TikTok coordinates with WeChat? Or uses the same API? Is this documented somewhere?

I've dug into this more out of curiosity:

They're called "mini programs" (小程序): You can see the dev pages etc. here: https://developers.weixin.qq.com/miniprogram/en/introduction...

These days, the vast majority of mobile development happens on this platform. They can have 100 million daily users in some cases.

Otherwise, you have to get an approval license from the government, per game. This had been blocked for a long time until recently: https://www.thegamer.com/china-approving-game-licenses-again...

These government pages discuss the process (but only in Chinese): https://www.nppa.gov.cn/nppa/channels/301.shtml or http://web.archive.org/web/20200605135934/www.sapprft.gov.cn... Note, only Chinese companies can go through the process. Apparently the process includes interfacing with the API, which isn't public. But some guys I pmed on reddit said they can interact with government ID servers or wechat auth. The 2nd api is public: https://developers.weixin.qq.com/doc/oplatform/en/Mobile_App...

I appreciate you digging this up.

It is still unclear to me how a Weixin ID corresponds to a government issued ID and how an app would know that a user is a minor.

The Chinese mandate you linked to describes the same rules as elsewhere, but there is no indication of how they would be implemented. Does a "real name" policy mean that an login is tied to a government ID? Or does it just mean what Facebook does to make users more valuable to advertisers?

I'm astounded that there is so much gossip about this and so little evidence.

> I'm astounded that there is so much gossip about this and so little evidence.

Welcome to discussion of China in Western media.

You're right though, I've never seen anything official about what I originally said, only reports about it.

> Welcome to discussion of China in Western media.

Yes, as someone who lived through the Cold War and has been studying Mandarin for a few years, I cannot help but see parallels in how everything about China is being muddled.

Oh nice, I'm at university right now with Mandarin as part of my degree. The politics around China is certainly interesting.

Are they doing that voluntarily? Or is that something that is forced on them by the government?

Regulation. That basically sums up American and Chinese political differences.

When is regulation ever voluntarily?

From what i heard Chinese parents complained to their government about their children losing time on social media and their government reacted by regulating that space in their society.

When have we ever expected companies to do the right thing? Governments are needed to come up with regulations for that, but restricting which content or how much someone can consume, even kids, would be touted as deeply authoritarian in our societies. So the otus is then on parents...

> restricting which content or how much someone can consume, even kids, would be touted as deeply authoritarian in our societies

No. We have industry-voluntary schemes such as PEGI ratings, and most products have kid-friendly modes. Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime all have kid-specific modes, for example. They're selling to parents, and that's what parents want, so that's what they get.

You're right that governments are needed to make regulations, but not that regulations are needed.

Parents also want cheap gas and big engines that make them feel macho, and to be able to use hand me down car seats of dubious safety.

Sometimes what's good for society takes precedence over what people want.

Sometimes, as you say. Even the car seats fall into the not-society category more than the society category.

And happily your examples are nothing to do with the call for regulations on the topic of having kid-safe versions of content production, so I feel encouraged.

Won't someone think of the child-car-seat manufacturers?! The second hand market is driving them to ~bankruptcy~ [buying fewer yachts]! /s

Where is the time limit in Netflix for Kids? All I see is a selection of content that is appropriate for children. It is much easier to set a limit on a device that is cold and inhuman and can't be pleaded with for more screen time than it is to try and manually enforce such a limit.

It is easier, I agree. We solved the problem a different way entirely, so I don't know, but perhaps putting the TV power itself on a timer could work? Timer on Netflix doesn't mean they can't switch to D+ or other.

> Where is the time limit in Netflix for Kids?

It's called parenting

> It is much easier to set a limit on a device that is cold and inhuman and can't be pleaded with for more screen time than it is to try and manually enforce such a limit.

If you don't want to do parenting, then you can also block access to netflix (or from the tv or whatever) at your router.

While I mostly agree with you there’s an interesting discussion to be had that China also has parents, and they’ve decided that it’s not enough to rely on parenting to address childhood addiction to things like social media. You can argue it’s a good or a bad thing but clearly they’ve taken a different approach, and whether that leads to empirically better outcomes is worth exploring.

A cynic could say China's culture is to cede far more to state control. US culture is to cede it to corporate control.

Either way it's a symptom of parents outsourcing parenting, because the culture in both countries is for parents to work 120 hours a week.

TBH Chinese are still very hands on helicopter parents, even when they work ass off. The issue is you can be strict and controlling and still lose to corporations who spend billions to engineer addictive products. Which at minimum takes disproportionate resources / attention to mitigate. Hypothetically this is where parents complain to state to regulation since ostensibly corporations are suppose to cede control to state. Plus don't have to be the badcop trying to enforce screentime when state takes that choice away. Also plenty of parents who cede control to corporations and allow products to baby sit their kids by giving kids access to adult ID to circuvent restrictions. I feel like US voters are pessimistic their gov can shape corporations in some realms. Like loot box regulations for youth feels like it shouldn't be that difficult to pass.

Thanks for the parent shaming.

Yeah, no, I do not want the government rearing children, thanks.

You probably just meant you don't want a nanny state but as stated it can be interpreted as abolish public schools.

For all their other sins, at least China seems aware of the dangers of unfettered access to all that "tech" has to offer. I've long been of the opinion that it's insane for a country to allow any agent (in the broadest sense of the word) anywhere in the world, direct and unlimited access to their citizens' life, thoughts, and desires through the internet.

So 1. The Chinese govt makes laws restricting these apps for young children which are only valid in China, 2. Tiktok obeys local laws in China and local laws in the US, 3. the US and other Western govts don't force social media companies to make the apps safer for children, and you are blaming the Chinese govt for making American kids stupid and addicted?

How does the behavior of Instagram, Pinterest and others fit into this theory?

Very valid points until, "and you are blaming the Chinese". It was a quote of someone else.

They may as well take advantage of the enemy’s weakness.

Who would have thought that WW3 is fought via social media apps.

WW3 started years ago, and we have only just started to realise. The objective of this war is to turn the citizens of your enemies' countries into useless, self-absorbed, self-hating nobodies.

For those of you who have read The Hobbit, I see the "Culture War" as something more akin to the scene in that book where the trolls were turned to stone. That is - while we may think we are involved in some great "culture war", fighting the (online) forces of anti-democracy, bigotry, racism, etc etc - actually all that is intended is that we are arguing amongst ourselves.

I have come to a similar conclusion. The intelligence services seem to be completely oblivious to any of it and are still staring at the horizon for some enemy plane to enter their territorial space when at home their daughters and at college their sons get run over by algorithmically enhanced fine-tuned propaganda: to either weaken their bodies, drug up their minds or cannibalize their culture. That’s taking the second front of the late Cold War to an entirely new level of warfare.

But maybe I am mistaken.

I'd love to have someone verify this. If you type Douyin into YouTube you see the platform contains the same nonsense videos that TikTok has. So we know the content is similar. The question is the experience really different for users under 14. And if so, how is this enforced? If it's a matter of stating your birth date when you sign up then I don't think the restriction means much.

Might be problematic if they enforce identity verification. With social passports and other nonsense it might be impossible to just register new anonymous account.

opium wars?

> I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations.

I have lots of concerns about TikTok and refuse to use it myself. But this is ridiculous - and that upsets me quite a bit because is delegitimizes the actual problems with TikTok. TikTok will not lower anyone's IQ. This is straight up just old man yelling at cloud. And that does us all a disservice.

Previous generations spouted the same strawman about TV, and in general, all previous forms of media

I am pretty damn sure if I didn't waste tons of time as a kid in front of TV and even more in front of computer playing highly addictive games my IQ score would be higher, I would have much wider breadth of knowledge and would be a more complete person.

I caught up on that later on life, but no thanx to this addictive media, but rather by cutting them off and spending time better, much better.

Let's not normalize addictions, human brains for some evolutionary reason we don't grok completely yet have this weakness, which was probably a strength in distant past.

Have you seen many kids these days where parents don't curate their access to internet? My friend there is no big difference between rock-bottom heroin addict and them. Trying all kinds of mind tricks, extortion, fists, lying, stealing (devices) just to get more tiktok time, watch more streams, play more online games. It is a sad view, and normalizing it hurt those victims badly.

My kiddos are too small for this (1 i almost and another a bit more than a year) but I can already see how addictive screens are to those, even if we play them old bedtime tales from youtube that we used to watch as kids. Now active screens are on completely different levels and kids have no way to defend themselves. Heck look at how many adults are addicted to that. Many even refuse to admit it, like word "addict" means failure, rock-bottom, needle sticking out of forehand instead of spectrum of impairments, ie higher restlessness, being more nervous etc. Just like sugar of nicotine withdrawals.

Agreed.

They said that about radio. They said that about TV. They said that about computers. They said that about dumbphones. They said that about smartphones. They're now saying that about apps.

They said it about huffing paint thinner too, to be fair.

I think most of these statements are actually far more true than we give them credit for. Not necessarily because of what they do but because what they displace.

I was in senior year of high school when World of Warcraft dropped. Half my class went from high performing bright eyed students to zombies barely passing classes because they stayed up until 3 AM doing raids every day.

It's largely the same sort of problem as with weed and alcohol. It's not that you'll go stark raving mad or your arms fall off, but you sort of just stop doing other things. There is no time for it, and you have no will to make time for it. You become so sedated you're essentially fine doing nothing in particular all your life.

This was a problem with most of the things you listed. Each got progressively better at it.

Why were "they" wrong? Is it because the issues of each successive development in mass media made those of the previous iteration look quaint? It's easy to look back on (for example) TV as a harmless diversion, but it was a radical development in the dissemination of visual information.

Also this is a funny argument. If these things are truly making people dumber but the change is happening on a generational level, then a dumber generation would not realize that it is dumber than the previous one.

It's also further muddied by other changes - like changes in education in the past 50 years - which makes the phenomenon harder to isolate and to judge.

I don't know about IQ but it does reduces people's attention span and that's the reason to limit the video length to few seconds.

I interviewed for a data science product manager role (I am one) at a games company. They were doing very interesting things with generative models however the person running it’s speciality was a Phd in addiction (and plenty of work in the field)

Was so interesting from an intellectual stand point but so very very evil.

What was the company name?

Playtika

Sounds like EA but I'm not sure if you can even speak about that right now :D

I am in no way interested in not letting people know about this. It is outrageous.

How to give the gift of dopamine no matter where you are in your gaming journey.

Introduce ‘gifts’, monitor effect and then mass deploy. All using ML tools.

Clever but oh so awful.

A 2016 talk by Tribeflame CEO Torulf Jernström about the monetization of mobile games called "Let's Go Whaling!" also caused a bit of a ruffle a while ago.

Ominously delivered with smug smirk, met by smug laughter: "I'll leave the morality of it out of the talk. We can discuss it, if we have time, later."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

Turns out they would have had time later but for some reason opted not to.

It’s like the wonderfully pretty, comfortable offices of Phillip Morris. Help everyone forget where their salaries come from.

I made an account to reply to this. I don't think this is a China/TikTok issue but more an issue of how the west is treating its people.

Sure, social media/TikTok shows impressionable people that you can earn a (good) living by making content (as does YouTube, Twitch, and OnlyFans). Still, western civilizations aren't offering an attractive alternative.

Look at all the layoffs in tech and all the outsourcing that has happened with companies that earn record profits.

If I were a young kid growing up now, seeing my parents getting laid off for no reason and switching jobs every few years/months, I'd think this might not be how I want to live my life.

As a result, young people grow up chasing careers in content rather than science, infrastructure, tech, or health care because they now know that going down that path opens them up to massive vulnerabilities and possibly a low quality of life. After a couple of generations, there might not be enough people working in those necessary fields, which can hurt.

> What they collect is literally nothing special

I added my local pharmacist on WhatsApp once when I was waiting for an order to come in. Instagram is very keen for me to be his friend and frequently suggests him. He hasn’t posted anything, but I did look at who he follows, and it’s a collection of glamour models in skimpy clothing, which given the amount of Jesus paraphernalia in his store I’m not sure is something he particularly wants me to know.

TikTok, which attempts to divine your interests by noticing how long you spend looking at certain videos, probably knows the sexuality of its users, and niche interests that may not be public knowledge — there is for sure a family-first politician somewhere who spends a little bit longer than they’d like you to know looking at young-looking topless guys.

This information strikes me as “special”

> probably knows the sexuality of its users

Nope, they think I prefer brunettes, while actually I’m an equal opportunity uhm.. watcher.

And I burned my potential hooked on Club Penguin and rottendotcom. Why else would I continue to argue with people online?

> I think TikTok and similar products are garbage and will lower the average IQ, especially of younger generations. I am deeply concerned when I see kids hooked on that crack, because they are burning their potential

People in 1991 were complaining about the same with regards to newspapers (https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/why-the-news-mak...) and you can probably find the same sentiment around the time that the first magazines were published around the 1740s (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-tra...).

> What they collect is literally nothing special.

For the most part I agree, but it depends on the owner of the phone. Danish politicians have increasingly been using TikTok. It doesn't take a Chinese genius to correlate the location of two or more MPs during the current talks, regarding how to form the next government, to gain insights into how that could possibly pan out. They've basically stuffed a tracking device into the pockets of the most important politicians in the country and are now able to know when they meet.

Yes, true. I didn't think about that, but again, this isn't something new, relying on a more agressive than average tracking tech. West is just concerned about how it may be used.

Strava was similarly dangerous at times [0]. The difference is that the west has a strong grasp on western companies and what they do with the data, but what prevents the US to use the location data from, say, key Twitter users in other countries? From my understanding, it's legally possible for the govt to access that data. No one (really) budges.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072.amp

Isn't this one of the reasons why phone permissions (at least on Android) have the option to share location data with an app only when it's in use?

I don't know for sure but sneaky apps stills gets the location data through scanning nearby devices, looking for nearby wifi addresses, bluetooth, network traingulation etc. Few of these doesn't give them the exact location but still if you're a person of interest thar may be enough to connect the dots.

> sneaky apps stills gets the location data through scanning nearby devices, looking for nearby wifi addresses, bluetooth, network traingulation

All of those are also gated behind permissions like location, at least on Android.

> I'd say TikTok is a way for China to mitigate the threat coming from the west's upcoming generations, by ensuring their collective capabilities are as limited as possible.

I wonder how much the flavour of commentary would change if you swapped "China" with "Israel"...here comes the deep water.