[MikePlacid]

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

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

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

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

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

[wikfwikf]

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

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

[richrichardsson]

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

[tartoran]

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

[asutekku]

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

[lozenge]

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

[jojo259]

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

[mcculley]

The question is asking about multiple apps coordinating.

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

[jojo259]

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

[mcculley]

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

[bakuninsbart]

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

[robertlagrant]

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

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

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

[Arainach]

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

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

[robertlagrant]

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

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

[paulryanrogers]

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

[richrichardsson]

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

[robertlagrant]

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

[iso1631]

> Where is the time limit in Netflix for Kids?

It's called parenting

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

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

[DoneWithAllThat]

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

[iso1631]

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

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

[richrichardsson]

Thanks for the parent shaming.

[lzooz]

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

[jayd16]

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

[jryhjythtr]

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

[m348e912]

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

[rasz]

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

[novalis78]

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

[jryhjythtr]

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

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

[novalis78]

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

But maybe I am mistaken.

[hdra]

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

[chrischen]

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

[dragonelite]

When is regulation ever voluntarily?

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

[afpx]

opium wars?