Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night • Hacker News Board

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#391

Post by underseacables » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #76

underseacables wrote: post #56

As I read this the first thought that came to mind is if I were a kid, I would be very angry about it, and dedicate myself to defeating the system. I can’t help but hope the kids playing these games feel the same way.

The problem is that then the CCP won’t respond with “Oh no! They circumvented our invasive measures!” They’ll say “Hmm, they circumvented our invasive measures, I guess we’ll need even more invasive measures that are harder to circumvent.” This isn’t a game kids are gonna be able to win if the government is sufficiently committed to this goal.

With great sadness I must agree. I googled a bit in this and kids are being put into camps to break their love/addiction to games. The state will certainly come down on them quite brutally.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#392

Post by Dracophoenix » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #351

Dracophoenix wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "positive rights" does Facebook have? How are you defining value in your last sentence?

Facebook has the right to mobilize several orders of magnitude more resources than the average person, in that sense they have many more positive rights. For example, the positive right to spend a billion dollars. How value is defined in the last sentence doesn't matter, any way of defining value except total profit generation works. But for the sake of the discussion we can say total happiness.

The right to mobilize resources, even at the scale Facebook manages to the achieve, is not a positive right. Neither is spending a large amount of money a positive right. Perhaps you're confused with regards to what constitutes a positive or negative right? Or you'd like to explain how you are defining a "positive right" here ?

I disagree with your assertion that value not being defined doesn't matter. If it didn't, then your claim of "using your rights wisely to your maximum advantage essentially never brings the most value" would have nothing to stand on. After all, that's a value judgement.

I also take issue with your claim that the max profit generation is somehow irreconcilably divorced from total happiness. Facebook provides a service the people choose to use without guns to their heads. If people are unhappy with using Facebook or are uninvested in it (like myself), they can refuse to use it. If anything, I would arrive at an opposite conclusion: Much like cars and phones, people are satisfied with FB to the point that most are happy to use it, even if it comes with tradeoffs they wouldn't have tolerated in any other context. The user connects with others in a way that works for them and that's engineered to work very well for Facebook's financials. Every party involved is operating to their own standards utilizing their own negative rights to achieve their own ends. That's just business.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#393

Post by HeavenFox » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #173

HeavenFox wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About ten to fifteen years ago, “Internet addiction” was perceived to be a big problem among the youth in China. Kids would skip school and play video games in Internet cafes. Someone opened an “Internet addiction treatment center”. Parents would pay to send their kids there, where they are deprived of their freedom, be indoctrinated about their “sins”, and even subject to electric shock. [1] The state official telev…

Can you expand on what you mean by "everyone is an internet addict"? I mean in the examples you gave, you mention the children skipped school - which is a problem. The article and some other commenters mention a nighttime gaming ban - which is a reaction to kids staying up at night to play video games. Clearly there IS a problem, and the Chinese government has this way of solving it. In the west there's similar solut…

It's a problem of phrasing.

Back then, for an average person, there wasn't much to do on the Internet, except online games and chatting with friends, both of which are considered a waste of time. As a result, Internet itself was demonized, and Internet addiction was considered a problem, even a mental disorder.

Nowadays, China has a booming tech sector. Everyone is using the Internet all the time to browse TikTok videos, stream TV shows, order food delivery and shop deals. And people stopped talking about Internet addiction, because suddenly they realize they themselves fit the clinical definition, which was to be online for more than a few hours a day.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#394

Post by toomanybeersies » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

saithound wrote: post #379

araneae wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is very different in kind. Are there any other countries that enforce a daily time limit on an activity, whether for children or adults? It seems either an activity (like smoking) is typically banned entirely or allowed; having it be partially allowed like this is difficult to enforce and consequently invites weird and invasive measures like these.

Yes, there are. Examples that immediately come to mind: - Anyone driving a large vehicle for more than 9 hours per day, 56 in a week, and 90 over a two-week period in the European Union. - Adults using a tanning under a sunlamp for more than one cycle in a 24 hour period in many countries (others, such as Australia, did ban them entirely). - Children spending more than 10 hours per day in child care centers in many U…

Australia also has limits on heavy vehicle driving hours, and cameras on the main highways to enforce them.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#395

Post by Tade0 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #321

Tade0 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Western concept of freedom above everything is a joke in modern society. It is based on the premise that everyone is smart enough to take decisions for themselves. That's a misconception. The actual reasoning is that: 1. Everyone is equal in rights and responsibilities. 2. Those who use their rights wisely bring more value than the cost of decisions of those who don't. For some things 2. doesn't hold, so they'r…

The reasoning you cite is a retcon of the original reasoning that the OP got right. Beyond that, #1 is factually incorrect, Facebook has positive rights that you don't, and #2 almost never holds starting from the realization that you're assuming that profit is inherently wise and that maximizing profit almost always requires the maximization of externatility. So using your rights wisely to your maximum advantage esse…

Facebook is a company, I am a person. I don't see how this comparison makes sense, since these are very different entities.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#396

Post by zeusk » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

nchie wrote: post #259

zeusk wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is not so straight-forward if you're Indian or Chinese national.

No, that's true, but it's definitely possible. I know of plenty of engineering students in my home country who came here from China (and India) to do their masters, and ended up staying for work. But yeah, it definitely requires certain circumstances, and it's not realistic for everyone.

did I say it's impossible? I immigrated myself, the amount of financial resources and time it takes makes it infeasible for most of the population.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#397

Post by justshowpost » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #385

teakettle42 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's circular logic but probably good enough for the fascists... Er, fascists? We're talking about the CCP here -- these are communists.

Geez, serves me right for using an "-ist" word and getting an anal retentive "They're a different sort of '-ist'" comment. The Wikipedia definition "Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy" seems to tick all the boxes in the case of China, although I don't know if they…

[flagged]

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#398

Post by atatatat » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #357

ev1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chinese app wechat already does this in private homes for the purpose of enforcing KYC and "misinformation tracking" - you are required to repeat after it, repeat every phoneme/syllable to form a voiceprint (and coincidentally enough to basically train something to replicate your speech), look straight ahead, rotate around your head, and follow its instructions to sign in again. Also, asking two verified-ID mainl…

Which ever service implements this can be sure to have seen the last of me.

You probably play/have played games owned by these companies.

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#399

Post by atatatat » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

wrycoder wrote: post #356

throwaway744678 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology exists, right. But have you experienced it anywhere outside of China? I, for one, have not (at least in the UE). I strongly believe that the average western customer is not be willing to go through such a process.

I called Fidelity in the US about my account, and the agent told me the system was taking a voice print, to be used to verify me the next time I called in.

Did you tell them to opt you out...?

Re: Tencent deploys facial recognition to detect minors gaming at night

#400

Post by godelski » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #363

Horrifying usage aside... I'm curious about the tech here as it relates to structural bias. In the US there are frequent stories about how ML works well on white men, but not, e.g., African Americans and I think Asian Americans. There was that Twitter spat between Timnit Gebru and Andrej Karpathy about this subject, and whether it's "just" training data or inherent in ML, partly because of who runs the analyses and w…

A lot of that bias comes from the dataset used. CelebA is a common one but not the only one. In these datasets the faces are predominantly white. There's also the difficulty that darker faces are more likely to not gather as much detail given certain lighting conditions and so that affects Black people more even if you introduce an equal number of samples (so you need more diversity in lighting conditions for them).

That said, Baidu and Tencent have datasets of predominantly Asian faces, so their bias should go in the other direction. Being better at Asian faces (probably they do well on white faces because they can pull from typical research databases), and then not so well at Black faces. But this is just a guess. We can't know without seeing the results (which then it is still hard to determine bias because of how results are presented).