No, China is not ahead of the western world on this, nor is this an unprecedented policy.
Most developed countries already have robust regulation preventing people from giving undue professional advice, especially in health or finance.
These are the same regulations preventing from you claiming to be a qualified lawyer, doctor, accountant, etc without the appropriate qualifications.
Many developed countries such as the UK, Australia, and Canada have already started arresting finfluencers after victims have sued them for making fraudulent claims.
FCA leads international crackdown on illegal finfluencers | FCA - https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-leads-international-crackdown-illegal-finfluencers
The equation of a university degree as a valid qualification for China is mostly an artefact of the lack of adequate professional bodies and accreditation.
But if course, the devil is in the details and implementation.
It’s true that West has many similar laws. They are just rarely enforced.
China and their absolute control over digital life will probably mean they will be proactive with enforcement which often leads to supression of speech.
honestly, incredibly based.
People with platforms shouldn’t be allowed to spread blatant misinformation. That shit is incredibly harmful to uneducated people.
we need more mechanisms to correct bullshit coming from all forms of media
Im conflicted on this one.
It feels like a good solution for online stuff, but the biggest problematic influencers talk about politics, will they require a political science degree to comment on it?
Will this apply to journalists reporting on governmental situations?
Couldn’t this be used to prevent on site people affected by tragedies reporting without a degree?
Will home remedies be banned basically since it’s medical advice?
Very curious on how it will be implemented.
I am okay with that. Stay in your lanes
Completely agree
a degree in mathematics should not validate my correctness about health.
It will probably be executed badly, but the underlying idea is, as often, ahead of the western world. The sheer amount of stupidity that even earns money from being the village-idiot with a megaphone is mind staggering and saddening.
E.g. if only doctors of medicine (or equivalents) would be allowed to talk about vaccination, instead of every assclown with an “opinion”…that’d be societal progress and a tiny leash on social
cancermedia.Sure, a well paid doc telling vaccination is bad would inflict equal harm, but at least he’d be one out of 50.
Also sure, who gets to set the rules, who gets to judge and enforce? Can’t even be half-assed fair.
The problem isn’t who is speaking. Even if it’s only one out of a thousand doctors, the idiots will seek out and gravitate towards that one that confirms the thing that they want to believe. This will do absolutely nothing to even slow that down. If anything, it will even accelerate it.
True. Confirmation bias is a thing. But at least it could help the few who still seek meaningful advice. Then again, why would they be on social media in the first place.
Sadly I have no better idea to tackle that problem. You can’t cure Idiocracy-is-live-now
It’s impossible for everyone to verify the veracity of everything on a daily basis. We absolutely must decide for ourselves on a few arbiters of truth on important subjects. That way we can focus on verifying their understandings of and dedication to the facts. Reducing our load. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, when they’ve shown to be a faulty in their representation of the facts, there have to be consequences.
For instance, on YouTube, I watch an ungodly amount of science and computing content. With a few video essays or let’s play YouTubers thrown in to fill in by watching the content. PBS, SciShow, and Space Time are favorites. When it comes to astrophysics, et etc, Matt Odowd definitely knows his stuff and is committed towards representing things fairly. Similarly, with SciShow, Hank Green is all in for testing his hypothesis and admitting or fixing his mistakes. Recently on his own channel, putting up a video about the gros michel banana and banana flavoring. And upon testing his hypothesis and finding it wrong committed towards fixing the mistakes he made years ago.
Contrast with Sabine Hossenfelder. Who as a then particle physics researcher at CERN. Decided to bless everyone via her platform with her misunderstandings on poly sci and biology. Which to the best by knowledge she has never recanted or apologized for. Her content is blocked in my feed, and she is no longer with CERN to say the least.
It’s something we have to want to do for ourselves. No one else will do it or do it right.
Of course there might be shining exceptions on YT, not arguing here. But a platform where people post content simply to get money (or fame or both, why else use youtube at all?) is maybe not the best start to get good info. Or weed the crap out to find actual good content. I gave that up a long time ago.
It’s just tiresome to seek for pearls in a vast ocean of dullness. Especially if it’s a topic i don’t know much about but WANT to. On those topics where i’m already expert at, it’s easy to separate, but there i don’t need it :)
People often make content for the love of it. But it still takes a lot of work, effort, and resources. It has a cost associated with it. I would love it if tomorrow everyone left YouTube for peertube. The problem is rewarding and supporting those that do. Patreon works for some, but not all of them. That’s what YouTube is currently providing and why they stay. There’s also things like nebula, but again, that’s not available to everyone.
Perhaps a not for profit needs to be formed that will collect funds to maintain several instances of peertube or something similar. And all funds gathered above and beyond that would then be put in a pool to be doled out to the creators whose content was viewed the most. Up to a limit of a liveable wage for their area?
Yes, finding valuable content is a hard thing to do and no amount of AI or algorithms will really help with it. We honestly need to get together and crowdsource a directory of informed presenters as judged by others informed on the subjects.
You’re totally right. No arguments here. Sadly I don’t see anything like that happen anytime soon. The money is where stupid is.
I left YouTube shortly after they introduced monetization. Before it was bonkers and full of funny or interesting or just stupid content that people did out of joy or even with a glance of hope for a tiny “fame”. Then it slowly went dogshit when everything became optimized for ad-revenue and even thumbnailing became a precision-science. There’s still vimeo and the others, but mostly I just don’t consume video anymore. Maybe occasionally a game-review on YouTube, sorted by views and scrolled down a ton to find those with nearly no views. Not for their opinion but to see the game in action.
Algorithmic clickbait media will always break truth.
True. Hence I don’t consume YouTube anymore. And no other social media per se.
Look at the damage Andrew Wakefield managed to cause
Yeah sure, that’s the kind of idiot doc I thought of. But dumdums seeking confirmation for their beliefs, not the truth, will always find a way.
I for one value my freedom of speech
Oh I do too.
Prove it.
It’s definitely appropriate to ban genocidal and fraudulent speech. In our case it is permitted to protect our establishment. A defense for such speech is that instead of the speaker being an antihuman hateful liar in service of higher demons accumulation of power, they could simply be cognitively impaired, despite any impassioned ability to rationalize hateful lies.
If it needs to be banned, we’ve already failed as a society. Society should reject intolerance and value intelligence/knowledge. Giving anyone the ability to control speech. Gives the worst sort of person the absolute need to wield that ability.
This already assumes a generationally informed and educated populace, which is the end goal and wouldn’t really need any “systems” to improve information sources. Everyone participating would naturally reject falsehoods.
The difficulty is working out what system should exist in a world of massive morons.
I may be biased as an anarchist, but what about anarchism? Why would a flat, answerable government based largely on consent and mutual aid be a bad thing? Isn’t the current problem unanswerable people with too much power already. Why would we want to give them more power. That’s definitionally madness to me. If my ideals are any good, I think I should be able to convince them of that without force.
Our problem is that the establishment supports evil speech and suppresses truth. Yes, we’ve failed as a society. The establishment has always had the power to control speech. It’s not because we gave them that power.
Then if the establishment supports evil speech and is simultaneously also the only one capable of enforcing this. Why would you want to give them that power? Any establishment given that sort of power. Would instantly use it to suppress speech that is inconvenient to them.
Complex problems generally don’t have simple solutions. And anyone offering you a simple solution to a complex problem likely thinks you’re a fool.
Why would you want to give them that power?
Democracy is supposed to be allowed to exterminate evil. A theoretical outcome of democracy is less fascism with laws that prevent fascist power, with political campaigns promissing to erradicate demonic supremacist foreign control over the nation. It is genuinely that simple: Proposed laws to exterminate evil influence over establishment.
Just because something is technically a democracy doesn’t mean it has value. Any democracy that is not direct, accountable, or consenting. Isn’t much of a democracy. And democracy exterminates nothing. Any democracy that does, isn’t much of a democracy. Advocating for authoritarianism absolutely makes things less democratic though.
We didn’t get here overnight, and there is nothing we can do that would get us out of this position anytime soon. Especially not reducing democracy. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and cultural change. Teaching people to value understanding and knowledge. Only education can eradicate ignorance, but never completely.
democracy exterminates nothing. Any democracy that does, isn’t much of a democracy.
Permitting genocidal and economic fraud speech/lies, means that money is not just speech. Money is terrorism, fascism, fraud. Those with the most money determine establishment through media control, and permitted electability. Exterminating genocide advocacy (replacement theory is genocide of immigrants before their kids can be allowed to vote for universal healthcare), and exterminating trickle down oligarchist fascism lies, is the only option for democracy. People are fundamentally too stupid to vote, when evil speech determines their suicide, and it is the opposite of authoritarianism, when fake democracy establishment only permits authoritarian perspectives.
