China bans influencers from speaking on ‘serious’ topics like finance or health without university degree

Yup, as someone who loosely follows streamer drama, this is kinda based.

sure, but that's not what this is doing. it doesn't say they'll be held accountable. it just places a high barrier to entry.

i understand the sentiment behind it, but I don't think this will be effective at curtailing disinformation. it would, however, be a very useful tool for controlling online speech. especially with a government that has so much control over its universities.

If we held news accountable for misinformation then fox and all the other fascist networks wouldn’t even exist.

Yeah, I think if it's more about policing the misinformation influencers spread, then I can calm down a bit, although it still makes me nervous to think about the government picking and choosing what a person with a crowd can say.

For now, it's making sure influencers don't spread anti-vax bullshit, but what if tomorrow it's no talking about Palestine?

Even then, medical professionals themselves can fall to propaganda and spread lies, so we can't use a single person as an arbiter of truth.

Yeah I gotta agree with you on this, there's a frankly insane amount of pull these people have in society and as we saw during the pandemic not only did it cause people to endanger their own health, but those of others around them.

There's a lot of nuance to be discussed and Republicans shouldn't be in the room at all when it is, but yeah this is objectively true. We used to have laws regulating the news for a reason.

main focus here should be the word “influencers”

So, anyone: got it.

Sounds like they thought they could just argue on easy mode by putting the burden of proof on you. When you accommodated their request, that blew up their spot. Having no other recourse, they retreated to an insult since there was nothing else for them to do (but they were seething to get the last word, so you got that response).

Good on ya for making the fucker squirm.

Nah, if this happened in the US someone would just set up a diploma mill and rake in the money.

Pro gamer move.

The issue is our society encourages it. When the most important thing in life is money, people are gonna do shit like this to exploit others. Take away the possibility of profit for grifting people and the incentive to do this drops. Would it completely go away? No, there will always be stupid grifters striving to gain popularity or attention, but I think that without the monetary factor it would be a negligible presence.

There’s got to be something to do for accountability, but ….

Just want to point out the guy who made up the whole vaccine-autism scare was a scientist. All of the propaganda against anti-smoking, anti-climate change, anti-pollution, anti-lead efforts over the years has been produced by scientists

Educated people are people too. Just because they should know better doesn’t mean they are

Yeah, I think more is being lost here than "solved". Sometimes you need to ask simple questions about complex things. Ask any teacher and they'll say that students deepen their own understanding just as much as they teach back. It's part of the flow of creative ideas and inspiration. Everybody should have the right to be curious, ask questions, learn and make new discoveries.

Instead, this feels like "You are only allowed to have ideas once you've gone through the propogandization program to have the right ones". But I still do agree that we need to start trying lots of things to combat misinformation. Maybe a rebrand of education to show how much more interesting reality is than conspiracy theories. A focus on the truth that so much remains unknown, and conspiracy theories are like unhealthy junk food that never satiates that truth.

In China, the level of trust people have in the Government is very high compared to the US and Europe. That is the reason why this policy would work and would have reasonable public support.

In the US or Europe, a policy that seems reasonable but could be exploited by the Government for political control is a bad policy. In China, people have already sort of accepted that the Government is pretty secure in its position so it really doesn't need to suppress speech in roundabout ways; if the intention is to suppress speech then they will be explicit about it by using the words "this threatens state security" or "this is offensive to public morals". The thing about being a secure authoritarian regime with reasonable popular support is that you don't need to come up with pretexts to suppress speech or dissent. You can just say "this threatens our power" and put a stop to it. If the policy states the goal is to stop uninformed people from spewing nonsense on the Internet then people will accept that to be true, and the reality is that it probably is what the goal is.

How does a post where you make a bunch of uneducated guesses about a country get only up votes? Oh right, china bad, got it.

If only China would live up to the shining standard of the USA...

One country is spiraling into civil war while the other is the fastest growing economy in the world, and yet its the suicidal countries citizens constantly talking shit about the rest of the world.

China is not a third world country. They aren't oppressed people. America is both of those things.

America is already censoring free speech indirectly. Censorship from platforms. Shadowbans. Now even directly arresting and deporting it.

But look at Julian Assagne or Edward Snowden to see the myth of free speech.

The solution is to aggressively regulate the platforms, not the people posting. Saying dumb shit like "drink horse dewormer" is free speech; providing a platform to push that awful advice to millions of people is not a protected right.

Go with free speech. People usually get what they deserve, one way or another.

Which is precisely why China's quickly taking the world leadership title away from the US.

Needing the Chinese government's blessing of your online activities, is, I totally agree, very un-American.

"Nanny State"

Somehow we don't get memed on for that, even though it's all the same downunder.

How long to learn Mandarin? 🤣🥹🤷🏼‍♂️

MBA's and nursing degrees come to mind. Is there a group as educated and just as likely to fall for a MLM scam?

Are there plenty of dumb as door nails graduates with millions of followers on social media though? Because this is what this legislation is supposed to target. Basically if Trump was in "Chyna", he'd be in jail already for spewing nonsense non-stop on stuff that he knows nothing about, because he's not actually educated on it.

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.

Does a degree cost anything in China other than time and effort?

But should trustworthiness default to popularity?

America has a guy in charge of the health department that says a bunch of wack shit. It's not just influencers but people with positions of power.

I once worked for a CPA who asked me what a balance sheet was for.

He was from a wealthy Tibetan family dynasty and clearly paid his way into the industry, but who knows why he would choose to do that because he clearly was completely over his head.

We used to call him Michael Scott sans charisma.

I'd imagine the number of people with degrees who are confidently incorrect on the subject of their major is much smaller than those without a formal education.

While I don't agree with China's tactics, something needs to be done about people like Joe Rogan peddling harmful misinformation to millions of people.

And his shittery isnt a new thing.

He was shilling "alternative medicine" back in the 80s.

It's China. I'm sure there will be executions.

Naw come on, China's not known for their extreme degree of control over what they'll allow their citizens to see or post online, that's just wild talk man. They certainly don't have enormous human and technological infrastructures dedicated to making sure that their internet is squeaky-clean and government-approved for all their citizens who they totally trust.

The only reason it seems that way is because western countries would use that to control their populations, and you are likely from one of them and are fed anti-china propaganda.

Is it a nice idea?

Of course, I see the good side, too. However, besides the possible negatives you've already mentioned, I feel like this measure begs the question: Should everyday people be allowed to sway public opinion?

I think the answer is, unequivocally, YES! I think it is wrong to say that you need a degree to comment on a topic or that you need a degree to say what you think, publicly, about a topic.

I very much appreciate stricter regulation on misinformation, but this is concerning.

I suppose it will depend on how and how much they enforce this.

It's one thing to curb misinfo, but this smell like trying to control the population. You can't just blanket ban people from speaking a certain topic, that's like saying all science communicator now need to have science degree to talk about science. Now they say only people with degree able to talk about it, then if someone talk about topic not permitted, they lose their privilege. It's a very basic tactic for authoritarian.

That's banned by default. They are targeting uneducated nonsense.

Whereas the United States with all its freedom

The United States is the country that leans on their supposed freedom the most in the world, but they are not the country with the actual highest freedom. And that's even entertaining the rhetoric that absolute freedom is indeed desirable, which it most certainly is not.

Aaaand Louis Rossmann? A person actually working to bring influence and not just saying stuff?

Yeah I think this could backfire horribly, when grifters with degrees are given that extra credibility by government decree. Andrew Wakefield is a doctor after all.

Selectively. If there are enough laws on the books that everyone is in violation all the time you can justify taking down anyone at any time.

If youre an influencer with millions of followers a degree should be a small road block. Unless you dum.

That last sentence seems to describe a great deal of "influencers" that I've seen.

Its so funny to see people fleeing the US, meanwhile my maternal grandmother from China has a US naturalization oath ceremony like next week.

Jumping from one burning pot to another is so awkward, but objectively speaking, it's still a slight improvement.

I dont think we are meant to be in too large of groups at all in any sense. Companies are too big, some countries are too big too. I'm sure there are other examples but its more a general theory ive had lately than a proven thing.

Idk, a basement is starting to seem like the best place to put RFK Jr now.