China wants to limit teens to using their phones for just an hour a day to fight rising ‘internet addiction’::The Cyberspace Administration of China announced proposed regulations for children’s smartphone usage, including a “minor mode” with time limits.
IMHO, the one good thing China has done lately.
I don’t know if that’s really a good thing, but they have done quite a few decent things like cracking down on the rich for tax evasion (and using the billions “donated” by big corps to provide aid to the lower SES population), and the famous for grooming and sexual assaults. I’m no fan of an authoritarian regime, but there aren’t many places in this world where the rich and famous suffer the consequences of fucking around.
I’m guessing its their way of emulating nordic style progressive wealth taxes without scaring their markets.
Well, the crackdown has definitely scared the market and wiped out more than $1 trillion worth of stock value. It’s a fascinating case study of the fusion between communism and capitalism, as well as the convergence of centralized control and economic liberalism.
The high speed rail is pretty rad
Not with all the corruption and lack of planning. The concept would have been actually rad if it was actually implemented properly.
It’s hard to separate out what the media tells us - for instance I thought I’d been tricked by fake news when I heard that Russia was banning cigarettes for people born on a certain year and below forever. But it turned out it was true!
It’s only good until you realize how much it starts demanding identification and biometrics to properly implement. Just look at some of the laws being passed in the states in the name of protecting people. It’s that type of stuff that gradually leads to pseudonym websites like reddit or lemmy to erode away into more Meta type ones that lock your account until you send them photos of your identification.
Need to look past the this sounds like a good ideology and more into what are they going to start requiring when it comes to your daily use of tech. Of course only appealing to ideologies and buying into it is what governments lean on.
Well, I’m by far not a fan of invasive policies either, but the CCP is constantly spying on its citizens anyway. No privacy and no phone-addicted youth sounds better than no privacy, period.
I’m not in support of trying to control what people do. And I’m guessing those for it tend to be in support if they believe they won’t be subjected to it themselves, but would suddenly shift if they found themselves under the same policy.
That’s how it usually seems to go. Individuals thinking they are above the policy and in a special class. Believing it’s others that need controlling and not themselves.
If this can indeed be a mandate instead of just “demand parental controls”, the issue would be inflexibility. For a lot of people, limit would be enough. But for a lot, who are using their phones for actually beneficial purposes, it is not, and such people (who can also be talented and useful) are completely disregarded by universal rules like this. I myself firmly believe that smartphones are not suitable for actual work, but every situation is individual, for a lot it might be genuinely necessary. Also maybe things like LineageOS could bypass this anyway.
They’ve always been heavyhanded on that front, they manage a huge population and a standard police force can’t do all the enforcing for them.
Aren’t they doing that because teens spend more time on the screen than in the mines?..
(dark humour, I know…)