Americans: “This is censorship”
Also hundreds of American dumbass youtubers: "Covid vaccine makes you a transhuman robot; drink horse de-wormer instead. "
Also american dumb shit tech ceo’s talking out of their asses about shit they never studied: “Trans people are a conspiracy against humanity.”
The list goes on and on.
Well like, yeah, it is in fact censorship. I don’t think it’s a fundamentally bad idea by any stretch, but if it were implemented here in the US it would be instantly abused to dictate the political narrative. Given that’s the basis pretty much all american commentators are basing their reactions from, and that chinese citizens are restricted from sharing their impression with the broad internet, it’s understandable why the narrative on this topic is that way. The opposing viewpoints are all contained within a country that is extremely ideologically isolationist.
For what it’s worth, China isn’t particularly better on the issue of abusing policy to dictate the political narrative either. As examples of some of the concerns I’ve seen expressed by my chinese colleagues about this: nobody is clear (neither on english-language sites or on what chinese news sites said colleagues can access) about what these rules would actually entail - Will they then require university educated people (or certified or etc.) to present broadly accepted established scientific claims? Will those claims be restricted to their relevant field (that seems reasonable, but impossible to police) or is anyone with a university degree allowed to comment? What about people with university degrees, but politically inconvenient opinions about, say, Covid? We’re not very far out from a Chinese government that advocated for TCM and Barefoot Doctors, so while it’s good the government is working to combat medical disinformation, they also have been historically a source for some of the most damaging misinformation that’s still extant in chinese society today.
It’s fine to cheer this decision on the face, but dunking on youtubers is easy and by association dismisses the very credible concerns people are raising over this policy.
I don’t think it’s a fundamentally bad idea by any stretch, but if it were implemented here in the US it would be instantly abused to dictate the political narrative.
I don’t get this logic of “yeah it’s a good idea but if we do it we’ll do it wrong.” Like okay… Then do it right then?
It’s like when someone advocates for higher taxes on the rich and someone responds with “yeah that’s great and all but the rich will just find loopholes” like okay. Then close the loopholes as well.
I do not think the concept itself is bad (verifying credentials for people presenting information on social media), and something like it could theoretically be implemented in the US. This system specifically though, as it appears to be being implemented by china, would be utterly unworkable in the US. There’s absolutely no infrastructure in place to allow for that sort of broad centralized verification, and constructing some centralized system for credential verification across all US states would be an absolute field day for identity theft.
It’s currently unclear how China anticipates handling that requirement too, FWIW. As far as I can find, that centralized resource also does not exist for chinese credentials (possibly one exists for degrees from major universities, but since this is not restricted to just university degrees, it’s still an open-ended question). I’ve got no idea how they plan on verifying claims, and I suspect neither do any major service providers in China right now.
Make it illegal and prosecute those that wind up with an audience. You can’t stop everyone giving out bad advice but you can prevent people making it their career and building a large following.
The issues that instantly come to mind: That’s fundementally unconstitutional, there is no mechanism for enforcement, there is no agency tasked with that and US LEAs are already beyond the workload they could ever hope to address, very rarely is “more cops” a solution, how do you address people that say things like “wink wink this is not medical advice”. This is simply not a problem that can be solved in a single paragraph response. It could possibly be done, but it would be spectacularly non-trivial to implement, even if we were in an environment where giving that kind of authority to fhe current administration seemed like a good idea.
Americans: “This is censorship” Also hundreds of American dumbass youtubers: "Covid vaccine makes you a transhuman robot; drink horse de-wormer instead. " Also american dumb shit tech ceo’s talking out of their asses about shit they never studied: “Trans people are a conspiracy against humanity.” The list goes on and on.
Well like, yeah, it is in fact censorship. I don’t think it’s a fundamentally bad idea by any stretch, but if it were implemented here in the US it would be instantly abused to dictate the political narrative. Given that’s the basis pretty much all american commentators are basing their reactions from, and that chinese citizens are restricted from sharing their impression with the broad internet, it’s understandable why the narrative on this topic is that way. The opposing viewpoints are all contained within a country that is extremely ideologically isolationist.
For what it’s worth, China isn’t particularly better on the issue of abusing policy to dictate the political narrative either. As examples of some of the concerns I’ve seen expressed by my chinese colleagues about this: nobody is clear (neither on english-language sites or on what chinese news sites said colleagues can access) about what these rules would actually entail - Will they then require university educated people (or certified or etc.) to present broadly accepted established scientific claims? Will those claims be restricted to their relevant field (that seems reasonable, but impossible to police) or is anyone with a university degree allowed to comment? What about people with university degrees, but politically inconvenient opinions about, say, Covid? We’re not very far out from a Chinese government that advocated for TCM and Barefoot Doctors, so while it’s good the government is working to combat medical disinformation, they also have been historically a source for some of the most damaging misinformation that’s still extant in chinese society today.
It’s fine to cheer this decision on the face, but dunking on youtubers is easy and by association dismisses the very credible concerns people are raising over this policy.
I don’t get this logic of “yeah it’s a good idea but if we do it we’ll do it wrong.” Like okay… Then do it right then?
It’s like when someone advocates for higher taxes on the rich and someone responds with “yeah that’s great and all but the rich will just find loopholes” like okay. Then close the loopholes as well.
I do not think the concept itself is bad (verifying credentials for people presenting information on social media), and something like it could theoretically be implemented in the US. This system specifically though, as it appears to be being implemented by china, would be utterly unworkable in the US. There’s absolutely no infrastructure in place to allow for that sort of broad centralized verification, and constructing some centralized system for credential verification across all US states would be an absolute field day for identity theft.
It’s currently unclear how China anticipates handling that requirement too, FWIW. As far as I can find, that centralized resource also does not exist for chinese credentials (possibly one exists for degrees from major universities, but since this is not restricted to just university degrees, it’s still an open-ended question). I’ve got no idea how they plan on verifying claims, and I suspect neither do any major service providers in China right now.
Make it illegal and prosecute those that wind up with an audience. You can’t stop everyone giving out bad advice but you can prevent people making it their career and building a large following.
The issues that instantly come to mind: That’s fundementally unconstitutional, there is no mechanism for enforcement, there is no agency tasked with that and US LEAs are already beyond the workload they could ever hope to address, very rarely is “more cops” a solution, how do you address people that say things like “wink wink this is not medical advice”. This is simply not a problem that can be solved in a single paragraph response. It could possibly be done, but it would be spectacularly non-trivial to implement, even if we were in an environment where giving that kind of authority to fhe current administration seemed like a good idea.