A month ago, China made effective a new regulation that will force companies like Alibaba, Tencent, or ByteDance to give users the option to turn off recommendations, among other measures targeting algorithms to protect minors and the elderly, ensure fair pricing, prohibit fake news generation, or reduce addiction.
Is this the beginning of a world optimized for well-being instead of engagement?
A nice idea in theory, but obviously it has limitations if we could have checks and balances written into the Constitution at the same time as chattel slavery.
That’s just the most glaring example. But beyond that I think another issue with our system is that having so many forces pull in so many directions makes it hard to have a coherent long-term plan or response to crises.
Maybe but it’s just a thought-terminating cliche that someone always throws out at any proposal at all besides shrugging your shoulders and accepting every problem.
I disagree, this is an objection that applies to this particular solution.
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.
Devolving power to many smaller regional entities can offer a kind of open corruption that would be hard to pull off at a national level without attracting attention.
Honestly, the older I get, the more I like the vision of a 1930-era utopia. I get up. I have a communal exercise program in the morning. I work for some number of hours, while kids are at school. It's a 32 hour work week, but that's made up for with my 8 hours mandatory education. I'm guaranteed a job, a house, food, and medical care. I'm guaranteed retirement and disability too. There is no advertising. I don't have access to video games, alcohol, drugs, or Facebook.
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.
>It's a 32 hour work week, but that's made up for with my 8 hours mandatory education.
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.
In general, I'm a fan of little happening. In the same way as if I don't vacuum or make my bed, nothing happens, but it's what I'm expected to do. There's some social stigma, and little more.
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.
I get the appeal of having structure, but I only think it works if it's voluntary to sign up for it. What you're describing sounds like a voluntary military enlistment (communal exercise, job, house, food, medical care, retirement, and disability), except with access to video games, alcohol, drugs, and Facebook (and also more hours).
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.
The 1930s were a horrible time, but had plenty of beautiful utopian visions of the future.
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.
China has a technocratic communisim which embraces capitalism since the 1970s. That includes the learnings and notes from a 5,000 year old administrative bueracracy corps formed by qishihuang of the first ming dynasty. China is doing great (today), however poor planning as recently as the 1970s lead to widespread food shortages and people selling their kids to butchers for cannabalism (so it still has capitalism is my point). I like china personally, it's not a utopia, but it is closer to utopia than anything I have experienced in the usa.
Pollution's gonna happen somewhere unless the way we manufacture changes radically. The US never solved the problem, it just outsourced it. Overall, I think progress's been made.
China doesn't embrace capitalism. They're thoughtful about where they have and haven't embraced it.
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.
> Honestly, the older I get, the more I like the vision of a 1930-era utopia
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.
No. I'm saying I like structure in my life. It's work to get that done on my own, and I'd like someone else to do that for me.
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.
If so inclined we could equally well cast the desire to just act in accordance with one's own desires and not contribute to some sort of greater plan as childish. Doesn't really rise above the level of an insult.
> "What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?
There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.
When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects."
> There is no name calling. There is only a correct assessment.
For starters, you're asserting without argument. Which leads it to appear to be name calling.
Secondly, given you are being downvoted to hell, you should probably reevaluate if it is really a correct assesment. After all, if its obviously correct why aren't people agreeing?
Second you are clearly using childish as an insult, instead of saying what you really think is wrong with that view - which is a second reason why it looks like name calling. Childish can mean a lot of things, some positive some negative, its hard to see from your posts what the specific objection is, which makes it seem like just a shallow insult.
> What do you believe is not childish in an adult saying they are unable to control themselves and that they need someone to do it for them?
For starters, the original poster did not say that. They especially did not say they were unable to control themselves.
They did say they would like to delegate some aspects of their life. I personally wouldn't want to live in their utopia, but its not like it's totally different from how many societies work including our own.
I hired a guy to do my taxes, instead of taking responsibility for them myself. Is that childish?
Some people hire personal trainers instead of coming up with their own exercise plans. Is that childish?
Some people go to university for a structured education, instead of reading textbooks, articles, recorded lecture videos themselves (seriously, between lectures on youtube, open courseware, lib genisis, is there any valid reason to go to university except a lack of self control and discipline?) Is that childish?
I would argue the true mark of an adult is knowing what to take responsibility for yourself, and knowing what to delegate to others. We all have limited attention, if we try to do everything we do nothing very well.
> Secondly, given you are being downvoted to hell, you should probably reevaluate if it is really a correct assesment. After all, if its obviously correct why aren't people agreeing?
A lot of people are wrong about a lot of things a lot of the time. Popularity doesn't make something true or false. If you're chasing what's popular you will never be honest.
However, it does mean it is not "obviously" true, and you need to provide a compelling argument for why whatever you believe is actually the case instead of just asserting it.
If that's childish, then fuck being an adult. In fact, if you want to step it up a notch, than being an "adult" is having as many children as you can to pass on your genes. Anything more than that is stuff humans made up to not be bored when they get past child bearing age.
The law doesn't specify what you get when you turn off the recommendations, largely because there are too many possibilities and it can't adequately define a solution over all products. The net result is companies will likely comply to the minimum extent possible allowing you to turn off your algorithmic feed by turning off your feed entirely. Many products will be useless without this feed so consumers will opt into turning it back on and nothing will change.
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.
If it really disables recommendations and just displays content in chronological order, it would be quite nice. Although technically the differentiation isn't trivial. Is a simple search optimized for relevancy an algorithmic suggestion? I would say yes, even if it is clear what is meant in spirit of these laws: Suggesting buzzing content to increase 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.
Chronological order doesn't mean unbiased. LIFO is an algorithm. The only way to remove bias from the platform would be to deliver 100% of the available content at equal priority. But practical time and space limitations make that impossible. If a provider is nothing more than a dumb pipe moving bits from an input queue to an output queue, then the control of the moderation moves further away from the end user and into the hands of the content creators. Whoever is better and faster at getting their bits pushed into the pipe will be able to censor by brute force any opposing viewpoints.
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 think there is something lost in translation, the "recommendation" would means "personalization", mostly to do with using user data or behavior for recommendation, but a pure independent ranking algorithms.
Their primary product is delivering eyeballs to ads, and they’ve boiling-frogged us all to accepting them at the top of the search. Or, maybe income as been added to their legendary search algorithms?
I was actually thinking this morning that I'd like a similar feature for YouTube. It's recommdation system seems to basically regurgitate the very last thing I watched.
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.
Although sometimes it throws up an obscure clip with maybe 100k-400k views, something random but strangely delightful that it is funneling attention to. And everyone in the comments is new to it, saying “the algorithm brought me here”. I’ve been fascinated by it. They’re almost like reverent worshippers, “all hail the algorithm”. It’s never content that’s heavily curated, like a personality’s page. It’s always like “summer 2004 raccoon eating a dorito”. It brings us together for this brief moment, guides us like a shepherd for the sheep. Like a God, we have little idea of how or why it does what it does (shows us one piece of content or another). I really enjoy those moments.
Does this include removing the layer below this layer of the filtering/censoring of what content can reach the masses to begin with? Is it a double standard and/or hypocritical and/or virtue signalling otherwise? "These individual companies aren't capable of doing this for the betterment of society but we are"?
TikTok would suck so much if they blocked you from your Follows recommendation feed and For You recommendation feed. The platform doesn't have a nonpersonalized feed so you will have to search for content you want to watch.
Is it really worth mentioning that? I don't see how "What about US atrocities?" is relevant here. At best it's a distraction, at worst you're implying that we shouldn't talk about China because the US is bad too.
Lower than all of the deaths caused by Mao? Really?
Also, if intent is the greatest predictor of future deaths (as opposed to just tallying past deaths), a chronically tyrannical regime looks way worse than a democracy's bungled retributive invasion.
The majority of western accounts of great Chinese famine come from the book "Hungry Ghosts" which provides almost zero actual evidence of the event other than sensationalized accounts.
If you actually look for the sources of data and don't just blindly believe the western propaganda pieces repeating the same figures, this will become pretty obvious.
I'm not suggesting that there wasn't trouble, death, and suffering during this period but I'd take the multi million death counts generously extrapolated from incomplete with a bolder of salt.
What does this have to do with the article or imglorp's post? How is this relevant to the discussion at all? What are you trying to say? I don't understand why you are bringing this up. Would you please explain it?
It's relevant by showing that the problems pointed out by imglorp, while real, tend to happen in every country of that size, and selectively using them to condemn a country is silly - especially so when done by a state that's objectively much worse in that regard; also note that while most of those problems in China happened in a distant past, in US they are recent (Middle East) or current (imprisoning people without proving them guilty or police shooting random people with no consequences).
China provides this law because they already track everything every citizen does. This is a virtue signal from a country gripped by a brutal and oppressive government.
I don't fully agree that that is the reasoning. Addictive algorithms or not, Facebook/TikTok et al can and does track you comfortably (as do most states including China).
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.
I think the issue he is pointing out is that China has plenty of laws that, as written, guarantee the exact opposite of what the state actually does. For instance, article 35 of the PRC's constitution guarantees "freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.", yet that is obviously not the case in practice.
> 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?
Yes. You really can't take China's laws and proclamations at face value. Look at how many times they tried to "ban" Bitcoin or VPNs, yet they keep coming back. China does what China wants, and the written laws are a smokescreen.
So this video is meant to be funny, but it really isn't funny for the government to brainwash school children... or have forced sterilization and prison camps for ethnic minorities.
> One Weibo user from Shandong province said she had to earn 66 points per day - which according to a screenshot of the learning record she posted takes around two hours.
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.
Which translates to less than 2% in public security and policing, i.e. less as % of GDP relative to US. All this number shows is PRC doesn't spend much on military and about EU levels on policing but gets misconstrued as PRC overspending on domestic security. That's true for every NATO country that underspends on military.
Maybe it is difficult to distinguish individuals, but I didn't make the original post. You made some broad request for some "evidence" that I feel no need to provide when it is self apparent. What is the Great Firewall of China for? Why does it only exist there? Why doesn't https work... or most VPNs?
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.
Why did you reply to me directly then? If you don’t know what threads are then you should find out.
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.
To quote you, "Here’s a question I expect you’ll never answer: is it within the capabilities of any groups within the West (state-sponsored or otherwise) to fabricate the information you’re using to make those assessments? And if so, how have you decisively eliminated this possibility?"
Oh you really got me by plumbing my comment history for an out of context non sequitur you could use. It really shows the intellectual depth and substance of your position when you avoid and get triggered by extremely basic but inconvenient questions.
"Art 6: “… actively disseminate positive energy, and promote the application of algorithms to be good.”"
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
I like the concept. What happens if a company claims to have removed their recommendations yet has not? Would this even be enough to cause a scandal with real consequences?
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.
> 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.
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.
As if the West didn't have social credit system. Not too long ago, there was a discussion here about algorithmic tenant scoring, and there were users here defending the practice. In China there's at least some legislation to curb abuses. In the US, not so much.
While the laws being selectively enforced in the West is a major issue it is a much larger issue in China. Laws like these are tools to get others to do what the government wants under implied threat.
The vast majority of people are well aware that anything they put on a digital device gets vacuumed up. Whether make witty quips about corperate overlords or their FBI agent is immaterial.
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.
In practice it will be a arbitrary weapon used by politicians in the Chinese regime to club companies that don't play ball over the head with.
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.
I half agree. The CCP already has a lot of tools to wield power over any company that doesn’t play ball. This law will become part of that tool kit, but not much different from the status quo in that regard.
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.
Most major companies have communist party officials embedded into the corporate structure, so if a party member is found to be negligent, they would be arrested/removed from power.
..does anyone else find some small irony in this, given that China is also the country fixated on CCTVs and social scoring of its own citizens in a panopticon of its own design?
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.
I'm pretty sure CCP is trying its best to protect itself.
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.
Does it really make sense? 1.2b people, if they know the govt is trying to control the narrative a vpn is not hard. What about 325m people in the US and other western countries that believe their govt would never lie nor their main stream media so never look for alternative news sources.
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
History shows an endless parade of examples where sufficiently charismatic and/or cunning leaders/regimes/movements (e.g. Mao, Reagan, Trump, Salazar, Ghadaffi, Khan, Gandhi, Seko, Savimbi, etc)...kept large populations in cultish thrall through combinations of carrots and sticks, including via control valves on statutes and the media.
Take your pick on where any figure fits, but its very possible for it to "make sense"
This makes a ton of sense. Seems the next frontier for the CCP is to gain control of tech companies, most of which could be peppered with talent that has studied in the West
Does it really make sense? 1.2b people, if they know the govt is trying to control the narrative a vpn is not hard. What about 325m people in the US and other western countries that believe their govt would never lie nor their main stream media so never look for alternative news sources.
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
Because you're seeing it through the lense 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.
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.
"Because you're seeing it through the lense of western media."
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.
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"
If you start with the assumption that Chinese government is trying to do good for its citizens,
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's a difficult topic, I don't think any country has found a humane way to deal with terrorist organizations.
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?
Terrorism was the reason given for the initial escalation towards the Uighurs around 2014. There were several domestic terrorism incidents involving a handful of Uighurs around, the most notable (to me) being there was a car-fire/bomb in Tian'anmen Square late 2013 and a knife attack at Kunming Train station.
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.
It seems in China it’s only considered terrorism if it’s committed by an ethnic minority. Han Chinese have committed far more terrorist attacks yet you don’t see the government putting innocent Han Chinese in concentration camps.
It's a mental exercise similar to watching a movie."Willing suspension of disbelief", it's called. Why would you care whether Mr. Big Muscles is winning or not given that he's just pretending to be the hero of the universe?
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.
If you're American I'm sure you can relate to the Chinese here. I almost never think about the millions of dead Iraqi people my tax money contributed to
The major difference is in America you can criticize what America did to Iraqis at the top of your lungs and work to get different leaders elected. Can't do the same in China without consequences.
It's true you can't undo the past but it's still a major difference. A population having the ability to speak freely and change elected leaders can effect change and prevent governments from continuing bad policies. Is it really that difficult to see how different that is from a continual status quo?
In what way do we not have a continuous status quo since world war 2? the US continues invading countries and expanding the empire regardless of protests or people's writings. That's my point, none of it has made a difference
China has recently had a lot of really similar rulings. The issue is that filter of western media wouldn't let you hear about those as often as you hear about CCTVs. Did you know their equivalent of the supreme court recently ruled that people can't be filmed in shopping malls (and other public spaces) without their consent?
I think we need to be careful in how this is read. It has some great public interest points, but also includes some language which more or less would prevent sentiment that was contrary to regime policies, etc. But again, lots of positives too.
>"“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. …”"
Well it's China. In the context of their system I think most Chinese would consider it to be a good law. It takes power away from private companies and extends the Chinese governments power to "ensure stability". That latter half most Westerners would probably find unsavory but it's just how China operates.
I think comments here that this all about Chinese government wanting to silence political opponents via arbitrary application of the law miss the point. Preventing use of algorithms takes power from big internet companies to feed addictive content. In turn this is in line a general policy of CCP to curb the influence of big companies or prevent those to appear in the first place even if those companies follow all government guidelines.
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.
“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
They genuinely care for people and are doing this for their people's best:
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?
China's total deaths from covid are likely in the tens of thousands. These "extremely harsh" zero covid policies have saved countless lives in the most populous country in the world (and lives in other countries). This is a pretty bizarre thing to criticize China about. In terms of the total amount of people they've had to lockdown and for the total length each person had to be locked down for, they've done way less than any other major country including the US
Indeed, I was very surprised to run the numbers a few days ago and realize we've been locked down here for around 4 months total on average (not including curfews). Now the lockdowns weren't nearly as severe as those in China, but it's interesting the average Chinese citizens only had to endure a few days of lockdown (obviously the distribution is massively skewed).
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.
this is ridiculous. It can genuinely believe that lockdown is the best approach, even if said approach turns out to be the wrong move. Which is hardly even a settled point.
In fact, it seems like the height of arrogance to think China is making decisions about its greatest city with Western opinion in mind.
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
To all of those skeptical of this law because it was written in China- what’s wrong with importing it to the U.S., the EU, or the U.K., adapting it to local characteristics, and then using it? Even if you might question the spirit of it in the PRC, what’s wrong with the letter of it in a different country? Isn’t the idea still sound
I'm with you, I'm reading lots of comments criticizing this because it's from China government. Are people rejecting merchandise because it was manufactured in China? They don't are about that. Why should we care if it's a good law? Don't shoot the messenger.
This is great, and we should celebrate China for doing this. I would genuinely love to see this kind of legislative will in Western society.
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.
Both are separated subjects. The article is talking about content consumption and how algorithms would be controlled with this law. Government tracking is a different matter.
> Both are separated subjects. The article is talking about content consumption and how algorithms would be controlled with this law. Government tracking is a different matter.
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!
Governments tends to hoard information, they just store everything they can for "future references". Later on the process they can use some types of algorithm to dig and cross information for a target or whatever, but is a different matter. Nobody is going to say "ok track me, but don't use an algorithm" that would be the lesser problem, obviously the tracking is the issue there. As I said before, is a different discussion.
Next step, "for the wellbeing of its citizens", the chinese government will stop censoring too critical content for a healther relationship to issues to discuss. I hope this trend continues.
PRC's been fairly prescient around regulating/managing the internet/tech, folks here whine, but west increasingly adopting PRC censorship and filtering, and eventually we will see sense in regulating algos. Tech was already in crosshairs, PRC simply more able to execute. Just an aside, new focus on algo mirrors PRC developing concepts around warfare, from informatization and now intelligization. Former about info, latter about algos. I hope those terms get more use.
“Algorithmic recommendation service providers shall actively disseminate positive energy, and promote the application of algorithms to be good.”... Are free and fair elections "good"? Is one party rule the best guarantee for "positive energy"? This is so ridiculous coming from a non-democracy...
In the USA we have due process rights so that the government can't just randomly disappear people for months [1] or forever [2]. Unfortunately some guilty people go free when the government fails to prosecute in respect of these rights, but it is the price we pay so that the rulers can't just suppress their crimes and destroy anyone they dislike.
In China you can be the son of a powerful official, kill someone with your car in front of everyone, scream “Go ahead and sue me, my father is Li Gang!”, and the government will indeed go to work to suppress witnesses to your misdeeds, even though the incident is already a viral meme on social media [3a]. But I guess you can give them credit for finally charging this kid who murdered someone with his car... 3 months after the fact. [3b]
But make sure not to compare Xi to Pooh-Bear, your future will not be bright! [4]
Anybody who's ever worked with houseless folks will laugh at the idea that cops can't just pick people up and hold them without any repercussions. In the US you need to be of the right social standing to actually be afforded those "rights".
Due process has always been a myth in US history for people who aren't of a certain privileged status. For example, the whole concept of "citizen's arrest" was created in order to let non-cop white people detain black people
Unfortunately the most marginalized people in any society are often treated badly. That's different from a society like China's, where anyone can be disappeared for any amount of time with impunity if they offend a powerful person. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-drives-high-profile-...
If you're upset about what was happening in the US during the 1950s, definitely don't learn anything about what was happening in China at that time. Mao, Stalin, and Hitler are all vying in Hell for the title of Most Lethal Human Being Ever.
Yes, Peng Shuai came out to say she was fine, with no explanation for the months of disappearance. She recanted her allegations, again with no detail or explanation as to why she made them against a prominent party official or how exactly her plain words were supposedly misunderstood.
Only a child or a 50-center would assume that these things happened without threat or coercion.
And she is only the latest in a long list of disappearances of CCP persona non grata, as documented in the links I previously provided.
“Only a child or a 50-center would assume that” someone might disappear from the foreign social media for a few weeks without oppressive regime forcing them to? Do you realise how ridiculous you sound?
As for "CCP full of angels" - of course not. I'm just not indoctrinated enough to believe US is any better. There's one fundamental difference though: China is improving.
Hmm, you seem to have conveniently omitted the more damning half. Denying her own allegation without any explanation.
Why don't you tell us why you believe the CCP is full of angels who would never do such things? Any friends there?
> I'm just not indoctrinated enough to believe US is any better.
You don't need to be indoctrinated. You're actively ignoring any evidence that is inconvenient for your rosy picture of China. From the CCP's perspective, you're the perfect citizen. They wouldn't even need to censor if the country were full of good obedient citizens like you, who believe what they are supposed to believe and ignore what they are supposed to ignore.
> China is improving
I believe that as much as I believe Russia is invading Ukraine for its own good.
And you are actively ignoring any evidence that's inconvenient for your rosy picture of United States. From both of your parties[1] perspective you're a perfect citizen.
See, here's the thing: nobody is claiming China is perfect. But you assume US is, or that it's at least better than China. Despite the million people killed just because your president wanted reelection, or the fact that your law doesn't quite apply to wealthy people, or the fact that the police is murdering people for their skin color with impunity.
Ever wondered why?
1. Two parties is fundamentally different from one party, right?
> And you are actively ignoring any evidence that's inconvenient for your rosy picture of United States.
I'm actually not. I have pointed to several examples of things you have repeatedly chosen to ignore, and you have pointed to zero examples of things I have ignored.
"I know you are but what am I" is a children's game. When adults speak, it is based on facts and logic and evidence.
> See, here's the thing: nobody is claiming China is perfect. But you assume US is, or that it's at least better than China.
It is better in some ways, which you have so far refused to acknowledge.
I have no problem acknowledging US faults. I have no problem acknowledging that China is better at not starting pointless wars, for example.
You should have no difficulty acknowledging that it is impossible to know the extent to which China is improving or has rule of law when all information is restricted by the CCP's totalitarian censorship regime. And you obviously understand corruption, so you should have no difficulty acknowledging that we should be deeply skeptical that an overwhelmingly censored society has rule of law. Because the point of censorship is to protect the government from what the people would do if they knew the truth.
I do not care which country is better. I am not here to be a good little obedient nationalistic drone of any country. I care that the good people of China and America understand the natures of the systems that rule over them and fight against the corruption in those systems.
Ah, you mean transparency. Indeed, China is quite a bit behind in that regard, and I'm afraid it's to some extent cultural, but it's improving, see eg http://www.ecns.cn/m/news/society/2018-11-27/detail-ifzaaiuy... ("China's courts have livestreamed more than 2 million hearings online over the past two years as part of efforts to further improve judicial transparency").
No, the difference is that in America, the news media report on these things which are horrible and embarrassing to our country, so that the people can know and fight to improve things. In China, everything embarrassing to the CCP is instantly censored to present a sanitized reality where all behavior displeasing to the CCP does not exist.
Just like how most Russians think Russia is liberating Ukraine in a "special military operation" and the indiscriminately massacring of civilians is airbrushed away.
>No, the difference is that in America, the news media report on these things which are horrible and embarrassing to our country
And nothing changes. Convinced child rapist was let free because he was wealthy and “wouldn’t feel good in prison”. Do you think this was followed by some reform to make sure it doesn’t happen again?
>In China, everything embarrassing to the CCP is instantly censored
This is obviously false. Talk to someone from China perhaps, or take a look at their media?
Total nonsense. The US doesn't have perfect rule of law but then nothing is ever perfect. Failures like the ones you are presenting have been widely reported, are largely controversial, and nobody who has criticized those arguably undesirable outcomes has been silenced or disappeared by the US government.
I would a thousand times rather be indicted in the US or most European countries than in China or in Russia where the arbitrary and corruption of the judicial system reign.
>Total nonsense. The US doesn't have perfect rule of law but then nothing is ever perfect.
So how is it different from China again?
As for being indicted - please check out statistics of how many people in American prisons were sentenced without proving them guilty. The fundamental difference between legal systems in US and China is that the American system is faulty by design, ie its flaws are not considered flaws. Same way politician's corruption is considered normal.
It's a matter of degree. Not everything is black or white. Things can be better or they can be worse.
Since there is no way to just argue one's way out of it, I'll just point you to the ranking established by the World Justice Project [1] in this document [2].
I would say that I generally have more trust in openness, transparency, and independence than in closeness, opacity, and subservience to a single party. Therefore, a priori, I would assign more trust to documents and research produced in the "West" or other places with these values than in anything coming out of mainland China. But please, go ahead and quote.
This article is exceptionally naive to the point of propaganda and it is both interesting and sad that other comments to that effect are downvoted.
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.
Of course it's dystopian and some people seem to buy into the narrative that it's "for people's own good". Well 'yes' but not really, because the primary motivation is to counter any entity that might gain power over the government(even though they already pretty much control any company inside China, so it's kind of redundant), not because the Chinese government gives any f*cks about it's people as much as to pass such a law. If they legitimately cared about "people above algorithms" they wouldn't have a social credit system, wouldn't persecute uyghurs by using either home-made but mostly stolen technology from western powers (primarily US) through corporate espionage.
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.
Isn't the wording "synthetic false news"? There are already other laws to prevent people from posting about Tiananmen square, there's no need to add a new one.
"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] (chinese affair office in lithuania)
This Medium post reads like propaganda/promotional material. Algorithms can also do good at burying propaganda. What you want/need or believe you want/need may also be dangerous to you. I am against predatory algorithms but this post makes me recoil with all of the promotion that comes with it. Not sure what to think anymore.
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.
I am seriously concerned with the rampant paranoia and lack of critical thinking in these accusations. People genuinely think the Chinese government is sponsoring Medium posts for niche audiences and that they have any interest in HN commenters? It's simply beyond comprehension. Y'all latched onto what, < $1M? in Russian FB ad spend and let your imaginations run to the moon and back.
There is too much content on big platforms to make unpersonalized recommendation systems viable. Even something simple like a feed showing you videos from people you follow is a recommendation system personalized to you based off the users that you personally follow. Without personalization you get stuff like trending videos with maybe new videos sprinkled in too help new videos catch traction. YouTube's trending page is pretty much universally hated by everyone I've talked to.
Will that ever happen in the US? I cannot imagine it. A ton of companies will be out of business. A lot of our services will be forced to move to a paid model. I would love it but I can see Facebook and google, among others, spending a ton of money to fight it and essentially not let it happen.
China was so ahead of the curve when it comes to private companies collecting and mining data. Ant Group is a big example of that, which was stopped by the government (power struggle or not?).
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.
no, a lot of human rights activist/lawyers that abided by the written laws (china constitution) were persecuted. [0]
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]
So we're holding China, who's running a UN-recognized genocide against the Uyghur people, and who restricts travel and jobs on an algorithmic social credit score, up as doing something socially positive against algorithms, huh
There is no war in Ba Sing Se; we have never been at war with Eastasia
This is so typical soviet/communists lie, I can't believe, exists educated Western people who don't understand, how huge this lie.
- 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
> This is the game and balance of power as it exists today
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.
Some elements of the law are part of the GDPR, but I would say that the Chinese law has an much more broad and ambitious scope. GDPR regulates that a human is not subject to an automatic decision that has a (negative) legal effect on him or her. The Chinese law additionally prohibits elements that built addiction, prevent bots from registering accounts, not generate synthetic false information, etc.
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.
This is largely in line with changes in the regulatory landscape of China and particular the tech sector overall. Up until now China has let private business do whatever it wants with economic growth as pretty much the only goal but just like anywhere else it's created a big rift between social outcomes and market outcomes.
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.
The US has done some truly terrible things too - but that doesn't mean everything they do is evil, nor does it mean every American is evil.
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.
Is this the beginning of a world optimized for well-being instead of engagement?