China has introduced a new measure to combat misinformation, requiring influencers sharing information on sensitive topics to hold a degree in that area.
The rule, which came into effect on 25 October under the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), is reportedly aimed at reducing online misinformation and protecting social media users from potentially harmful advice or guidance.
Influencers discussing subjects such as medicine, law, education, or finance must provide proof of their expertise, whether through a professional licence or degree. Platforms including Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), Bilibili, and Weibo are tasked with verifying these credentials.
The CAC has also banned advertising for medical products and services, such as health foods and supplements, in an effort to curb promotions disguised as educational content.
So you’re saying I can’t continue promoting dick pills that might cause people’s organs to boil? 
This would simply be impossible to replicate in the west, for the straight forward reason that trust in the government is so incredibly low.
“Sounds good on paper, but getting a degree isn’t the only way to have knowledge on a topic.”
“I don’t know how so many see this as a good thing, like this is blatant silencing of the common man, basically saying ‘you’re just a regular person working a regular job, you have no say in what goes on in society.’”
I agree with these guys. Guess we’ll see how it’s implemented.
Absolutely based.
“I’m all for free speech, but the self-proclaimed health gurus are causing so much damage and honestly need some regulation so I’m for this regulation,” one user wrote. “You can’t practice medicine, psychology, physio etc, without a license, so I’m not sure why they were allowed to ‘practice online’ in the first place.”
This user gets it.
This is the way medical subreddits are run and I like it a lot. You prove your credentials to the mods, they’re tagged next to your name, and if a thread becomes something politically/professionally relevant it’s restricted to people with tags. The result is that those threads typically have good comment sections without most of the typical reddit bullshit. They aren’t stuck re-justifying germ theory to a 10th century peasant with a smartphone or sorting through spam/troll comments.
I. NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won’t do!
It won’t do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
I gotta get this tattoo’d to the inside of my eyeballs istg I open my mouth too early so often
In the future you’ll have to have a degree in Marxism Leninism before you can make comments on Hexbear.
No more excuses for not reading theory
PhD in the immortal science of Posting
based based based based
Can I be kept around as entertainment? C’mon, we’re all libs here!
Don’t worry I’m in DSA so I’m qualified
Tbf, once the whole world is red, leftist spaces only available to members of ML parties would probably be a good idea. Doing that to any primarily Western leftist space today, though, would immediately kill off the entire space. Because let’s be real, functional party institutions and theory education is just Not A Thing in the West.
Common China W
Considering that we now know the US funded anti-vax stuff during Covid in the Phillipines (thats the one they admitted to at least), this is probably a smart move.
Chinese Asmonogold with his phD in entomology.
First they came for the antivaxxers, and everyone clapped
Noooo a time honored tradition on the internet is pretending to be an expert to manufacture consent!!
one of the biggest advantages of china over uSSa is that they don’t have such rampant anti intellectualism. imagine being elitist while being anti intellectual.
growing up in the dumbass soup of shithole america, i did not recognize how pervasive anti-intellectualism is here. i read some article maybe 10-15 years ago about the phenomenon from an outsiders perspective and it was eye opening.
authority to speak on a topic here is recognized as having access to a platform and an audience. rigorous study, demonstrated expertise, peer recognition are all easily handwaved away as belonging to a corrupted process, but having a single benefactor that can put your face or voice all over the landscape is treated as a mandate if enough people stop to look/listen.
and its been this way here apparently since the earliest days of carnival barking snake oil salesmen, confidence artists and ink-by-the-barrel printers pitching the latest magic cure-all.
people want to blame tiktok and facebook and podcasts, but these are just the latest tools. talk shows, talk radio, periodicals, pamphlets & papers played a similar role.
and, sadly, there are people out there looking for factual answers that totally exist, but have been indoctrinated by the powerful not to trust anything but how some voice of the spectacle makes them feel… while maintaining pure cynicism against anything that reeks of education.
it’s like that post about how somebody’s grandfather was immune to communist propaganda because they were illiterate.
I’m really torn here between “this is unbelievably based and would do incalculable good if applied worldwide, and in fact if this were done in the U.S. 20 years ago we’d be living in an entirely different future” and being big butt mad because I have a lot of opinions and hate being shut up. Also even though i’m just a biology degree dropout that doesn’t mean I know nothin, yknow
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i’m not sure how much of a difference it would make over here, given that higher education is expensive you’d just see a different, nerdier flavor of bougie propaganda
also the fact that college is liberal (No No The Other Liberal) indoctrination
I don’t think this new measure exists to shut up regular folks and not allow them to have an opinion on something. This is clearly targeted at people with large followings who claim to be experts or gurus. Influencers.
At what point do you crossover from “regular folk” to “influencer”?
I think reasonable people will disagree about what point that is, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to suggest that the point doesn’t exist.
1,000 followers
are you an influencer tho? i mean it says influencers not everyone, or is this just marketing
I like to think I influence with my powerful posts
“I don’t know how so many see this as a good thing, like this is blatant silencing of the common man, basically saying ‘you’re just a regular person working a regular job, you have no say in what goes on in society.’”
well let’s see: if you’re a regular person working a regular job in china, you have access to their insanely cheap higher education. alternatively, if a regular person working a regular job in china wants to get involved with what goes on in society directly (making medical disinformation slop doesn’t do that), they can join the CPC because china is an actually-functioning democracy where anyone can contribute if they’re willing to put in the effort.
Also if this is only about influencers, then most of “the common man” can still talk bullshit unimpreached anyway
“But we don’t get to directly vote for President”
And a lot of Western neolib “democracies” don’t directly vote for our heads of state either… I mean, Amerikkka’s system sucks, but so does British style parliamentarianism, and quite frankly a lot of ways we do representative democracy suck. At least Soviet style demcen admits to its issues and is upfront about how it works, when practiced correctly.
The Last few years definitely showed me how “democracy” as we practice it isn’t that great, absolute “free speech” is not an ideal worth striving for, and the average burgerlander is so easily propagandized. Covid showed how these racist bigoted fucks I have to live with have no sense of community and don’t care about making themselves or their families sick… great job “owning the libs” by killing your grandparents early and giving yourselves long COVID 😬
I know there’s good people here too, but are they the majority? IDK
Yep. “Free speech” isn’t worth much if it means any idiot can open his mouth and spout bigotry and no one’s allowed to do anything about it besides try to talk over him with ideals of community and caring, and individualism held up as a core ideal of a society does nothing but destroy community.
