honestly, incredibly based.
People with platforms shouldn't be allowed to spread blatant misinformation. That shit is incredibly harmful to uneducated people.
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Ahead of the entire world there. This would single-handedly destroy the right in Western society as it thrives on lies.
It sounds good until you think about it. "Government" prevents people from talking about certain subjects unless they are experts. But who decides what subjects, and who decides what credentials mean they're worthy of discussing those subjects?
I can only guess about China, but in the US, a similar law would mean Republicans are granted and mandated censorship of whatever they want...
It’s at least meaningful action with merit, even if flawed potentially.
Meanwhile the USA sits while people like you posit on these potential alternate realities and tens of thousands of people per month are convinced not to vaccinate their children, to homeschool, to back Ponzi schemes and MLMs, to treat autism with bleach enemas, treating cancer with all sorts of scams, etc because some stupid asshole grifter on social media said to do it.
I don’t think you realize just how bad it is. I don’t think you realize just how ineffective our regulatory bodies are. I had a patient where I was working with their child over behavioral issues and they were desperate. They were low income, Medicaid, and they spent $800 on a device that “used magnetic stimulation” to help their child “realign their brain and body”. They found it via instagram.
When I asked about it they sent many links: one from the seller about “research” that was all about transcranial direct current stimulation/tdcs. That does have some potential evidence but this device did not work in that fashion. It made no contact with the temples and it had no electrical output, it guaranteed this to allay safety concerns. They clearly just put together a list of citations that looked somewhat relevant to the laymen but did not hold up to scrutiny in any way. The device itself had 0 research behind it, obviously.
The second link was the website to purchase and find out more about the device. The notable thing here was references to the FDA being plastered all over the site. This is the major lapse in regulatory body. I was shocked to see this. Looking into it more I found that it was a loophole utilized by these scummy scams. They will find a facility that is approved by the FDA for manufacturing something that is FDA approved (like a tens machine) and hire it out to manufacture their scam product. They can then plaster “manufactured in an FDA approved facility” all over their packaging, website, and ad copy, which is extremely misleading. As long as they don’t explicitly say FDA approved or use the FDA logo, which is government property, they are okay.
This is just one example. I’ve been working with mostly kids for almost 2 decades now. I’ve seen many more terrible things embraced, anti vaccination being the most popular. I’ve seen people waste precious time that is essential during early intervention periods on quack bullshit like facilitated communication then when they finally give up on that their child is years behind and never truly gains any meaningful communication ability (which, to be fair, may have been the case from the beginning, but it also may not if they had embraced evidence based practice).
I’m sick and tired of hemming and hawing about this bullshit and “what about the morons right to be an idiot?”. Not when the moron robs their child of the capacity for meaningful communication, a proper education and social development, facilitates outbreaks of disease, or is fronting to scam people.
Similarly China saw the obvious issue with loot boxes and banned them. Meanwhile we are still hemming and hawing about the ethics of allowing children to gamble because we desperately need to allow them to funnel cash to tech billionaires and start addictive behavioral patterns as young as humanly possible, apparently. They also saw the inherent ethical issues with fee for service medical billing and are taking huge steps to transition away from it. Meanwhile our health reform plan is apparently “go fuck yourself and die”.
It is unbelievably frustrating how badly we are failing and how much we have been conditioned to do nothing with statements like yours. “Well, if we do that, it could blow up in our face, much like it’s currently blowing up in our fucking face right as we speak, so I guess we should just do nothing then”
Advocating for authoritarianism from an anarchist instance. Interesting. Yes, we have major problems with misinformation in the United States. And it's coming from within the government. You don't hand that fucking government that power. There is no authoritarian easy fix. The only way to fix this is to foster curiosity and a desire to actually inform oneself.
What you describe is a generational fix, and it is warranted. We still need something that can improve conditions tomorrow
That thing doesn't exist and what was proposed would only make it worse.
Again - defeatist attitude, predicting outcomes without data
Anything proposed without facts or data can be dismissed without facts or data. And you've given none. So what are you even calling out?
Do I really need to give you more data. When we are literally discussing one of the countries that polices/suppresses speech the most? I wouldn't trust our government with it. Let alone China's. Hell go look up lysenkoism and the persecution Vavilov suffered under a similar administration. Then tell me with a straight face they will value facts regardless of their convenience. Historically its a horrific idea. But I do look forward to any facts or data you have that proves otherwise.
Okay the data is that our complete lack of teeth within our regulatory bodies have led to year by year declines in vaccinations, consistent lack of an ability to hit herd immunity targets, an 88% increase in financial loses due to crypto scams in just the year 2022 (couldn’t find newer data), etc.
This doesn’t touch upon the corruption that has infiltrated regulatory bodies and PASPA was overturned in 2018, allowing stuff like fanduel to advertise constantly and everywhere legally leading to sizable increases in addiction, because god forbid we not allow capitalists to maximize their wealth accumulation even if its demonstrably harmful
So something needs to be done to restore trust in institutions. If we do what you suggest, education, how does this work? People don’t have trust in those institutions to allow them to have an effect! Unless your solution is to exterminate Trump people and moderates that “don’t trust the clot shot and would homeschool their kids if they had the time and money”.
You need an interim solution that may be drastic. And I’m not saying this is the right solution, but it is a solution, which is better than the nothing we are trying while our institutions continue to erode. Perhaps the solution is a complex solution of regulation with verified experts that still allows free speech that can be countered or suppressed if truly extreme (essentially twitter in theory when they first started the verified accounts but with higher bar for verification). I don’t know but I do know we need better solutions than “increase education and reap the rewards in 20-50 years”. How will that even take hold??
What you are arguing for is authoritarianism. What you want is accountability. The aren't the same thing, and none of what you've posted justifies authoritarianism.
I want accountability as well. The kind of accountability we need will never be achieved by thought policing. Does the irony of what you're calling for really need to be pointed out? The vaccines were only mandatory to be in public school. They always could have opted out and homeschooled. But even that minor inconvenience was enough for them to be harnessed along with similar groups. To install a fascist. A fascist that would be exponentially worse with the kind of power you're dying to give them. They need to understand why and want to be vaccinated. Imposing that on them without that knowledge will only make things worse. Previous generations understood that from personal experience. As well future ones unfortunately. My mother personally suffered from polio, and you better damn well be sure she made sure we were always vaccinated.
The interim solution is education. I get the juvenile need for instant gratification. Again that's part of the problem. Have you ever told a juvenile what they can and can't do? How did it go for you? Now understand the average person is even more juvenile and far more self gratifying. The more you thought police, the more they will push back. Deeper and deeper into the hole you will go. Till you've failed so much you're left with a "final solution". And at that point, no matter how right you started out as. You're wrong.
Literally, read up on lysenkoism. That's what this will be. And it killed MILLIONS. I realize not everyone on ML is ML. And if there's one universal truth it's that we anarchist are shit at gatekeeping. But one would hope your proximity to them might have rubbed off.
I am well aware of Lysenko.
The vaccines are only mandatory in public schools because we once again value personal liberty over collective responsibility. So much so that it is something indoctrinated into us from birth and culturally ingrained; being asked to wear a mask is seen as an act of violence by a significant portion of the population.
I again agree that education is the long term strategy. But two big things: again, key word is “long term. Second, what does this look like? You seem to think it’s as simple as presenting the benefits and reasoning and suddenly they’ll “get it” after being indoctrinated by disinformation campaigns. These people need to be deprogrammed. And further, what do you do about the populations until they’re “ready” to be reintegrated into society. You’ve now run into chinas Uyghur dilemma. What’s the solution? Optional education that they can simply eschew or easily find loopholes around, making the entire effort largely meaningless as they strengthen their own system of beliefs and recruit followers?
You mention popper’s paradox of tolerance; does that not apply here? Sure it is easy when it’s a Nazi but how does it work when it’s your aunt that fell for facebook memes about the Covid shot? Does that intolerance count? Because that intolerance literally kills people. Or do you just not care about that because you are a young adult who is healthy and unlikely to be a statistic in that epidemic? Sorry to the 3 kids that died preventable deaths and the 1648 that have gotten measles just this year alone; they have to wait for your “educate people and hope it works” plan. Well, except for the dead ones, they can’t
It's at least better than the village idiots being given a platform and a speakerphone. Even if we go back to a more tightly controlled information age, it's better than the prolific amount of nefarious bullshit around these days. Either indoctrination, propaganda, misguidedness, prejudice, or any number of reasons...
The problem isn't the village idiot having a place in which to speak.The problem is the village of idiots that get their information from that idiot.
Now you want to give that village of idiots the ability to restrict who can speak and what they can say. That will only make things worse.
100% I certainly wouldn't trust America and all the fake institutions we have here to be the arbiters of news and expert in anything. And someplace like China, where you can already be imprisoned for life. Or even put to death for having the wrong views. Nope. The problem isn't loudmouth idiots. It's the idiots that get their information from loudmouth idiots. As individuals, we should always be looking to understand the expertise and knowledge of individuals and their qualifications to speak on a subject ourselves. Not giving that power to a small group of people guaranteed to abuse it.
even put to death for having the wrong views
And then Kim Jong Un will bring you back to life and execute you with an artillery cannon?
What a crazy thing to say
China is a authoritarian government that crushes freedom and individual rights
If they are "ahead" I'm seriously worried about the future of humanity
This is the correct response.
Exactly!
It wouldn't, as having a degree doesn't make you immune from idiocy and propaganda.
There were a concerning amount of Health professionals who believed in and spread anti-vax rhetoric, including a pharmacist who purposefully destroyed COVID vaccines during the pandemic.
Yes, we should strive to reduce and remove misinformation online, but restricting it to the few is not a good idea, as they can be just as questionable as a random on the street.
No, China is not ahead of the western world on this, nor is this an unprecedented policy.
Most developed countries already have robust regulation preventing people from giving undue professional advice, especially in health or finance.
These are the same regulations preventing from you claiming to be a qualified lawyer, doctor, accountant, etc without the appropriate qualifications.
Many developed countries such as the UK, Australia, and Canada have already started arresting finfluencers after victims have sued them for making fraudulent claims.
FCA leads international crackdown on illegal finfluencers | FCA - https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-leads-international-crackdown-illegal-finfluencers
The equation of a university degree as a valid qualification for China is mostly an artefact of the lack of adequate professional bodies and accreditation.
But if course, the devil is in the details and implementation.
It's true that West has many similar laws. They are just rarely enforced.
China and their absolute control over digital life will probably mean they will be proactive with enforcement which often leads to supression of speech.
Im conflicted on this one.
It feels like a good solution for online stuff, but the biggest problematic influencers talk about politics, will they require a political science degree to comment on it?
Will this apply to journalists reporting on governmental situations?
Couldn't this be used to prevent on site people affected by tragedies reporting without a degree?
Will home remedies be banned basically since it's medical advice?
Very curious on how it will be implemented.
I am okay with that. Stay in your lanes
Completely agree
It will probably be executed badly, but the underlying idea is, as often, ahead of the western world. The sheer amount of stupidity that even earns money from being the village-idiot with a megaphone is mind staggering and saddening.
E.g. if only doctors of medicine (or equivalents) would be allowed to talk about vaccination, instead of every assclown with an "opinion"...that'd be societal progress and a tiny leash on social ~~cancer~~media.
Sure, a well paid doc telling vaccination is bad would inflict equal harm, but at least he'd be one out of 50.
Also sure, who gets to set the rules, who gets to judge and enforce? Can't even be half-assed fair.
The problem isn't who is speaking. Even if it's only one out of a thousand doctors, the idiots will seek out and gravitate towards that one that confirms the thing that they want to believe. This will do absolutely nothing to even slow that down. If anything, it will even accelerate it.
True. Confirmation bias is a thing. But at least it could help the few who still seek meaningful advice. Then again, why would they be on social media in the first place.
Sadly I have no better idea to tackle that problem. You can't cure Idiocracy-is-live-now
It's impossible for everyone to verify the veracity of everything on a daily basis. We absolutely must decide for ourselves on a few arbiters of truth on important subjects. That way we can focus on verifying their understandings of and dedication to the facts. Reducing our load. There's nothing wrong with that. However, when they've shown to be a faulty in their representation of the facts, there have to be consequences.
For instance, on YouTube, I watch an ungodly amount of science and computing content. With a few video essays or let's play YouTubers thrown in to fill in by watching the content. PBS, SciShow, and Space Time are favorites. When it comes to astrophysics, et etc, Matt Odowd definitely knows his stuff and is committed towards representing things fairly. Similarly, with SciShow, Hank Green is all in for testing his hypothesis and admitting or fixing his mistakes. Recently on his own channel, putting up a video about the gros michel banana and banana flavoring. And upon testing his hypothesis and finding it wrong committed towards fixing the mistakes he made years ago.
Contrast with Sabine Hossenfelder. Who as a then particle physics researcher at CERN. Decided to bless everyone via her platform with her misunderstandings on poly sci and biology. Which to the best by knowledge she has never recanted or apologized for. Her content is blocked in my feed, and she is no longer with CERN to say the least.
It's something we have to want to do for ourselves. No one else will do it or do it right.
Of course there might be shining exceptions on YT, not arguing here. But a platform where people post content simply to get money (or fame or both, why else use youtube at all?) is maybe not the best start to get good info. Or weed the crap out to find actual good content. I gave that up a long time ago.
It's just tiresome to seek for pearls in a vast ocean of dullness. Especially if it's a topic i don't know much about but WANT to. On those topics where i'm already expert at, it's easy to separate, but there i don't need it :)
People often make content for the love of it. But it still takes a lot of work, effort, and resources. It has a cost associated with it. I would love it if tomorrow everyone left YouTube for peertube. The problem is rewarding and supporting those that do. Patreon works for some, but not all of them. That's what YouTube is currently providing and why they stay. There's also things like nebula, but again, that's not available to everyone.
Perhaps a not for profit needs to be formed that will collect funds to maintain several instances of peertube or something similar. And all funds gathered above and beyond that would then be put in a pool to be doled out to the creators whose content was viewed the most. Up to a limit of a liveable wage for their area?
Yes, finding valuable content is a hard thing to do and no amount of AI or algorithms will really help with it. We honestly need to get together and crowdsource a directory of informed presenters as judged by others informed on the subjects.
You're totally right. No arguments here. Sadly I don't see anything like that happen anytime soon. The money is where stupid is.
I left YouTube shortly after they introduced monetization. Before it was bonkers and full of funny or interesting or just stupid content that people did out of joy or even with a glance of hope for a tiny "fame". Then it slowly went dogshit when everything became optimized for ad-revenue and even thumbnailing became a precision-science. There's still vimeo and the others, but mostly I just don't consume video anymore. Maybe occasionally a game-review on YouTube, sorted by views and scrolled down a ton to find those with nearly no views. Not for their opinion but to see the game in action.
Algorithmic clickbait media will always break truth.
True. Hence I don't consume YouTube anymore. And no other social media per se.
Look at the damage Andrew Wakefield managed to cause
Yeah sure, that's the kind of idiot doc I thought of. But dumdums seeking confirmation for their beliefs, not the truth, will always find a way.
I for one value my freedom of speech
Oh I do too.
a degree in mathematics should not validate my correctness about health.
It's definitely appropriate to ban genocidal and fraudulent speech. In our case it is permitted to protect our establishment. A defense for such speech is that instead of the speaker being an antihuman hateful liar in service of higher demons accumulation of power, they could simply be cognitively impaired, despite any impassioned ability to rationalize hateful lies.
If it needs to be banned, we've already failed as a society. Society should reject intolerance and value intelligence/knowledge. Giving anyone the ability to control speech. Gives the worst sort of person the absolute need to wield that ability.
This already assumes a generationally informed and educated populace, which is the end goal and wouldn’t really need any “systems” to improve information sources. Everyone participating would naturally reject falsehoods.
The difficulty is working out what system should exist in a world of massive morons.
I may be biased as an anarchist, but what about anarchism? Why would a flat, answerable government based largely on consent and mutual aid be a bad thing? Isn't the current problem unanswerable people with too much power already. Why would we want to give them more power. That's definitionally madness to me. If my ideals are any good, I think I should be able to convince them of that without force.
Our problem is that the establishment supports evil speech and suppresses truth. Yes, we've failed as a society. The establishment has always had the power to control speech. It's not because we gave them that power.
Then if the establishment supports evil speech and is simultaneously also the only one capable of enforcing this. Why would you want to give them that power? Any establishment given that sort of power. Would instantly use it to suppress speech that is inconvenient to them.
Complex problems generally don't have simple solutions. And anyone offering you a simple solution to a complex problem likely thinks you're a fool.
Why would you want to give them that power?
Democracy is supposed to be allowed to exterminate evil. A theoretical outcome of democracy is less fascism with laws that prevent fascist power, with political campaigns promissing to erradicate demonic supremacist foreign control over the nation. It is genuinely that simple: Proposed laws to exterminate evil influence over establishment.
Just because something is technically a democracy doesn't mean it has value. Any democracy that is not direct, accountable, or consenting. Isn't much of a democracy. And democracy exterminates nothing. Any democracy that does, isn't much of a democracy. Advocating for authoritarianism absolutely makes things less democratic though.
We didn't get here overnight, and there is nothing we can do that would get us out of this position anytime soon. Especially not reducing democracy. It's going to take a lot of hard work and cultural change. Teaching people to value understanding and knowledge. Only education can eradicate ignorance, but never completely.
democracy exterminates nothing. Any democracy that does, isn’t much of a democracy.
Permitting genocidal and economic fraud speech/lies, means that money is not just speech. Money is terrorism, fascism, fraud. Those with the most money determine establishment through media control, and permitted electability. Exterminating genocide advocacy (replacement theory is genocide of immigrants before their kids can be allowed to vote for universal healthcare), and exterminating trickle down oligarchist fascism lies, is the only option for democracy. People are fundamentally too stupid to vote, when evil speech determines their suicide, and it is the opposite of authoritarianism, when fake democracy establishment only permits authoritarian perspectives.