You said “I feel like China wouldn’t give out free food.” in the context of food banks. I made no claims about America. I made no claims about anything other than your statement “I feel like China wouldnt give out free food.” I was frustrated because you are making a feelings based statement about verifiable factual information that is accessible online.

You go to great lengths in this comment to say that China has had issues with citizens not having enough food, which makes sense, why else would they make food banks if no one needed the food???

I also stated exactly how recent these developments are in my previous comment. These are ongoing changes based on the literature I found and read on the subject. Nowhere in my comment did I suggest that no one in China is dealing with nutritional problems and nowhere did I suggest that China was doing everything in its power to solve those problems.

I only responded to your feelings based statement with verifiable information I was easily able to find online. You said something that suggested that there are no food relief programs in China, that suggestion was wrong. I clarified it for you when you refused to clarify it yourself. I am entirely uninterested in engaging with you on any other point here. Frankly a lot of your language betrays a very strong emotional bias in this discussion and I do not think you are interested in a legitimate discussion about food relief problems and existing programs in China.

As a side note it’s so typical for people in any discussion about China to just label random people propagandists. Yes for sure I’m a propagandist on a social media forum that sees less throughput than an average Facebook group. Tankies call me western interference and American liberals say I’m a paid propagandist. Imagine that there could be any nuance in discussing a nation comprising over a billion people, crazy I know right.

I don’t understand why it’s on everyone else to research baseless claims you are making, but sure, whatever lmao.

So to even answer the question you have to specify what exactly you mean by food bank. Providing food for people who are impoverished takes many different forms. From individual meal based facilities like soup kitchens, to dry and preserved goods providers, to international warehousing of emergency food relief supplies.

So assuming the question at hand is, does the government of China provide its citizens with any kind of nutritional assistance? Yes, they do. The available facilities vary by region, city, and even district levels. Most of the development of large organized food relief organizations has been relatively recent, with the first to adopt a “food bank” label starting in Shanghai in 2015. Between 2015 and 2023 the Oasis public food bank setup facilities across China formalized as a national network of food relief facilities.

At the same time the government of China has worked with public enterprises in China including restaurant chains and grocery stores to implement “Surplus food programs” to reduce food waste and redistribute food to relief programs and facilities.

This was all information I found on my own with pretty basic cursory searches in about 20 minutes. There is far more public information out there and I would encourage you to use free resources to research subjects yourself before making foundationless statements like that.

If you read the comment I just sent, I point out that I think I know what you mean but that the word you are using is not the correct word for that and in fact refers to something entirely different.

Meaning can be conveyed its just in this case you’re actually diluting a term used specifically to talk about an obfuscation tactic used by the Chinese government to interfere with political discourse on their social media platforms.

I genuinely did not know that, I had not checked what instance they were from.

You’re essentially saying theyre a paid disinformation disseminator? But thats not what wumao means. It also doesnt describe a phenomenon in western online spaces, but rather one on China’s social media networks. I’m not making a statement of agreement or disagreement with the idea that theyre a paid bad actor. I am calling out your usage of the term wumao.

This comment is so frustrating 😅 one of the only concrete statements you make about Chinese policy is “i cant imagine them handing out free food to anybody”. Literally political criticism based on vibes.

Is Lemmy a chinese social media platform? :o

Also, you’re using the term to describe someone who is not engaging in the behavior the term is meant to describe.

Wumao refers to posters who post unrelated content to disengage conversations around subjects that are critical of China. The term also referred to a phenomenon on chinese social media platforms, and alleged that the community party was paying people to make the posts. The majority of people engaging in that pattern of content are members of the communist party, party officials in any capacity.

Judging by the ingredients list I think you’d be at risk of vitamin A poisoning.

Did not think id come across someone bemoaning the illegality of marital rape today. You either do not understand what you are talking about or you are a genuinely horrible person.

So he said Trump was in the epstein files and that it was a whole big secret apparently (it was never a secret it has actually always been common knowledge). Then he made grok, now infamous globally for being a generator of sexualized images of children, and threatened to sue anyone seeking legal action against him while continuing to allow users to generate sexualized images of children.

And now suddenly his name appears in the Epstein files and he changes tune and we shouldn’t give a shit about the documents on how him and seemingly his entire cohort of wealthy white nationalists have been helping each other abuse children for decades.

Elon Musk will one day be universally regarded as one of the single stupidest most disgusting and most embarrassing human beings who has ever lived. He is living proof that the the wealthy do not deserve any of the hoards they are given. I cannot believe this person exists.

The 2026 global financial crisis will be really interesting to live through I’m sure.

Genuine question. How does all of this useless nonsense make them money? Is it all just from loans? Are they just saying “look at all the AI we’re doing” and the investors are just desperate to give them more money?

I just cannot fathom how they profit from all of this. They’re spending so much time doing this. For what? What is the business motive for doing this, if not to get bigger loans from their investors?

I’m guessing this will lead to more things being locked behind their subscription model. Ransoming core features for cash is the standard template of this process.

Kinda. But like, a compression algorithm that isnt all that good at exact decompression. It’s really good at outputting text that makes you think “wow that sounds pretty similar to what a person might write”. So even if it’s entirely wrong about something thats fine, as long as youd look at it and be satisfied its answer sounded right.

The majority of influencers are not in the same geographical regions as their fans. Content is not as regional as it once was. The TikTok algorithm is based on time spent viewing something, and things like search terms and engagement, more than it is about where you are geographically.

The same can be said for Instagram. How you connect with other users on instagram is by following them. It will recommend you new users based on who the people you follow also follow. Where you are does not have really anything to do with how you would engage with your fellow peers. They’ll mostly be asking you directly what your handle is and then following you. Your geography would mostly impact what kinds of new content the algorithm will feed you without any prior data, drawing instead from content that is popular with where you are from and what age you said you are and what gender you said you are.

I think a lot of people in this thread are misunderstanding how people use social media in general. Activating a VPN and creating an account somewhere else will not fundamentally alter how you use the platform. It just adds a very simple very easily accessible bypass measure to using it.

I personally expect that the platforms will make whatever concessions the government is asking for so they dont have to do this. Because teenagers make up such a large part of their userbase that it would be a massive hit financially to lose out on it. But the ban itself would be ineffective in ultimately preventing teenagers from accessing those platforms.

This added context is extremely helpful.

Porn is comparable because of its implementation and circumvention strategy, not because of its substance.

Drinking rates are decreasing, yes, but i disagree that it has anything to do with carding. It has been illegal for minors to drink since… at least the 60s? Earlier? Lol

Free VPNs are abundant and teenagers using instagram are almost certainly entirely unconcerned with their data being stolen. A market gap will come to exist for better free VPNs, advertising revenue being the driving factor.

I dont think that the majority of teenagers on Instagram / Facebook / TikTok are using discord or even aware of what it is. Some of them are definitely but I dont see those platforms as being interchangeable or serving the same functions whatsoever.

You could present literally the same arguments for why teenagers would never drink alcohol. Its against the law for them to purchase right, so its an inconvenience to access, so clearly they would all abandon it as all their friends become unable to access it as well. You could make the same argument for most kinds of bans. There are actually very few things for which imposing barriers to access has ever eliminated its use. Porn is an obvious example as well. Porn bans are essentially meaningless to consumers. They are so trivial to bypass as to be functionally non-existent. The only thing that imposed bans have done is make it difficult for companies to profit off of it. I am essentially ambivalent about that, but it’s a literal direct parallel in this case.

What is likely is that tools for circumventing in simpler faster ways will develop. Installing a VPN is already a single click operation. You dont have to do anything else. Teenagers are not going to abandon social media. Maybe you havent encountered many in the past 2 decades, but social media use is and has been near universal among them since social media came to exist. Like you’re nuts if you think they’re actually going to stop using it haha I dont know what else to say. But yeah maybe youre right. Making stuff against the law totally eliminates it because everyone is so lazy and incompetent they won’t expend any effort to overcome trivial barriers to access things they have built their entire lives around lol

It would absolutely be more effective to use legislation to address the root causes of excessive alcohol consumption than to make blanket bans. I’m not saying that the bans won’t do anything, but they are absolutely not effective on a broad scale. There are so many circumventions that are trivially easy to access that it renders the ban more of a general barrier for entry than an actual prevention of access. Its moreso “how hard are you willing to work to get it” than “you cannot access this”. So harmful alcohol consumption becomes a matter of effort. Addiction is frequently characterized by massive efforts to access substances. Its one of the hallmarks. I’m not arguing for teenage alcohol consumption, just pointing out that it’s only ever been a trivial block and we are very socially aware that it is circumventable and frequently is circumvented by minors.

And alcohol is a physical object that must be acquired. Social media access is not.

You can circumvent this ban from any device at any time. It’s like porn bans. It’s now just a matter of effort. Install VPN, click click done. Youre now able to browse freely as a minor. And again, now youre lying about your age. So all age protections are gone, and you are free to engage with the same content as before but with less actual protections in place. Youve taken an undesirable situation and rendered it into a subversive one, one that requires circumvention by design, and will therefore make the relationship between the user and the platform a dishonest one. This has a lot of consequences. It makes it a lot harder to actually check the age of people using their platforms, cause everyone underage will lie. You won’t be able to prevent them from engaging with grown adults in profoundly harmful ways, for example.

Alcohol and tobacco are (mostly) harmful in all circumstances, yes. Social media is not harmful in all circumstances. Human socialization can be a good thing, but it is impossible for those substances to be good things (except possibly in extremely niche circumstances). If social media platforms were designed to be good for people, then they wouldnt cause the same harm. If they had legal requirements to be moderated, to not spread misinformation, to not promote unhealthy and damaging habits, to stop the spread of hatred and bullying, then they would be significantly less harmful for teenagers and also everyone of all ages. These things would actually make social media better for teenagers. Completely useless age verification actually makes social media WORSE for teenagers. Teenagers are never not going to use social media. Sorry thats just the truth. Entire fields of technology and software design have been developed by teenagers seeking to circumvent age bans throughout history. These bans dont even require any kind of new innovation. They just need to setup a basic VPN. Trivial.

1. Will not work. None of these kinds of bans has ever worked. Is it not a common trope that teenagers can and do drink to excess despite not being legally allowed to purchase alcohol? Are we under some misguided belief that age verification procedures in this manner can or ever have worked effectively to reduce harm on minors?

2. Will have large unintended consequences far beyond social media access for teenagers.

3. Will actually make the internet less safe for teenagers, as they will now be lying about their age and circumventing the systems in place, which renders all existing protections for them ineffective.

4. Is pointlessly age targeted legislation as social media is also bad for adults as well. Its bad because of business practices and lack of ethical considerations in gigantic monolithic international social media corporations. If your end goal is making the internet safer for teenagers, your end result will actually end up being making the internet safer for everyone.