When the crackdown on video video games occurred in 2021, the social media business was positively spooked, as a result of many Chinese language individuals had been already evaluating short-video apps like Douyin to video video games when it comes to addictiveness. It appeared as if the sword of Damocles might drop at any time.
That chance appears much more sure now. On February 27, the Nationwide Radio and Tv Administration, China’s prime authority on media manufacturing and consumption, mentioned it had convened a gathering to work on “implementing the regulation of quick movies and stopping underage customers from changing into addicted.” Information of the assembly despatched a transparent sign to Chinese language social media platforms that the federal government shouldn’t be happy with the present measures and desires them to provide you with new ones.
What might these new measures appear like? It might imply even stricter guidelines round display screen time and content material. However the announcement additionally talked about another attention-grabbing instructions, like requiring creators to acquire a license to supply content material for youngsters and growing methods for the federal government to manage the algorithms themselves. Because the scenario develops, we must always count on to see extra progressive measures taken in China to impose limits on Douyin and comparable platforms.
As for the US, even attending to the extent of China’s present rules round social media would require some massive adjustments.
To make sure that no teenagers in China are utilizing their mother and father’ accounts to look at or publish to Douyin, each account is linked to the consumer’s actual id, and the corporate says facial recognition tech is used to observe the creation of livestream content material. Certain, these measures assist forestall teenagers from discovering workarounds, however additionally they have privateness implications for all customers, and I don’t imagine everybody will resolve to sacrifice these rights simply to ensure they will management what kids get to see.
We are able to see how the management vs. privateness trade-off has beforehand performed out in China. Earlier than 2019, the gaming business had a theoretical day by day play-time restrict for underage avid gamers, however it couldn’t be enforced in actual time. Now there’s a central database created for avid gamers, tied to facial recognition techniques developed by massive gaming publishers like Tencent and NetEase, that may confirm everybody’s id in seconds.
On the content material aspect of issues, Douyin’s teenager mode bans a slew of content material sorts from being proven, together with movies of pranks, “superstitions,” or “leisure venues”—locations like dance or karaoke golf equipment that youngsters should not presupposed to enter. Whereas the content material is probably going chosen by ByteDance staff, social media corporations in China are frequently punished by the federal government for failing to conduct thorough censorship, and meaning choices about what’s appropriate for teenagers to look at are in the end made by the state. Even the traditional model of Douyin frequently takes down pro-LGBTQ content material on the idea that they current “unhealthy and non-mainstream views on marriage and love.”
There’s a dangerously skinny line between content material moderation and cultural censorship. As individuals foyer for extra safety for his or her kids, we’ll need to reply some onerous questions on what these social media limits ought to appear like—and what we’re keen to commerce for them.
