Tencent Uses Facial Recognition To Ban Kids Gaming Past Bedtime (bloomberg.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In the latest bid to curb video-game addiction in China, tech giant Tencent has launched a facial recognition system to stop minors gaming into the night. The initiative will prevent people under 18 from playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. The system, dubbed Midnight Patrol, is in place in more than 60 of Tencent's games and includes popular titles like "Honor of Kings" and "Peacekeeper Elite," the company said in a press release Tuesday.
The facial-recognition system will allow Tencent to thwart the tactics kids have developed to get around current age restrictions such as using their parents' identities or devices. The system works by scanning the faces of players to check their age. "Anyone who refuses or fails face verification will be treated as a minor, included in the anti-addiction supervision of Tencent's game health system and kicked offline," the company said. The new rules fall in line with regulations the Chinese government laid out in 2019 to curb video-game addiction.
The facial-recognition system will allow Tencent to thwart the tactics kids have developed to get around current age restrictions such as using their parents' identities or devices. The system works by scanning the faces of players to check their age. "Anyone who refuses or fails face verification will be treated as a minor, included in the anti-addiction supervision of Tencent's game health system and kicked offline," the company said. The new rules fall in line with regulations the Chinese government laid out in 2019 to curb video-game addiction.
This is good and bad (Score:2)
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Seems combined with game streaming this would be easier to enforce.
Re:This is good and bad (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can tell you've never had to listen to a kid cry for days until you eventually give in and hand them the phone.
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Have you tried going into the kid's room with a box and saying "I'm putting your things in this box until you stop crying. For every item in the box it goes in the attic for one day"?
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I have two kids.
- First kid: Will continue crying. You can increase the punishment. You can say what ever you want and she will keep crying. We followed the book, we made sure that we were strict every time, but that did not change anything. People outside of family said that "kids are not like that". 10 years later we finally god a diagnosis for her, autism and a couple of others.
- Second kid: Will stop. (most like autism also, but no official diagnosis yet)
I hate people like you. I really do, because you
Re: This is good and bad (Score:2)
Don't hold the kid for 2 hours crying. You're just extending the pain for both you and the kid. Make it clear that a) you love them and b) you understand they are upset. Then send them to a "safe spot" (which they chose when they weren't upset) until they are calm enough and non-violent. If they won't go the first couple of times, then you may need to carry them to their safe spot. Don't continue a conversation when it gets repetitive -- children need to learn to accept no for an answer.
If that doesn't work
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No, I never had to.
I have very high quality noise canceling headphones.
Re: This is good and bad (Score:2)
China would disagree with you. Since the kids are citizens of the state, the state has a duty to protect their health.
In the classic movie M about a murderer who targets children, the ending gives a remark that the people failed to realize protecting the children was a shared responsibility. This is actually a semi common point in socialism and social democracies often have more policies to give children social support.
The gist is you feel that way but China and Chinese people do not agree with you. Live an
Re: This is good and bad (Score:4, Insightful)
the state has a duty to protect their health.
Yes I'm sure they're protecting their health with nazi death camps, sealing people in their homes, executing people without trial, attacking their own people, and running people over with tanks.
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Hard to convince me with that when you look at the death rate by country. This debate we lost, they won.
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Statistics from China are about as reliable as a CowboyNeal poll on slashdot.
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> sealing people in their homes Hard to convince me with that when you look at the death rate by country. This debate we lost, they won.
LMFAO -- You believe communist China? Wow, you must be a good commie.
Re: This is good and bad (Score:2)
Found the cowards...
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You know where the door is, chink spy.
Re: This is good and bad (Score:2)
I am an American. Also, what kind of spy posts on online forums about matters of Chinese policy. The whole purpose of being a spy is to blend in and I am hardly doing that with my comment.
Re: This is good and bad (Score:1)
I love in China. I regularly talk to people about these measures and if they support the government on the matter.
You're self defeating. Here is a Westerners living in China explaining how Chinese people think and you claim I have to be someone whose job is to create misinformation on the matter on some pedantic forum. You're even bold enough to call it propaganda when you don't see the irony that your brainwashed...
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That only holds true so long as you are actually doing your job as a parent, and not just letting your kid play games 24/7, fall asleep in class, and then yell at the teachers for not raising your kids for you. The state also has an obligation to the child to make sure it receives an adequate upbringing, which if you as the parent are not providing, the state not only can, but should intervene. In Germany, for example, home schooling is banned, because it's one of those areas where a child's right to a bala
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I have to admit the title of TFA made me laughing out loud. I thought basically the same thing as you did in my first reaction nevertheless.
Your post should be modded up, very insightful!
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An age verifying AI could run locally without having to send data to some remote service. But of course that's unlikely to be the case with a Chinese company. They'll collect whatever data they can.
But still, if you had it run locally you could offer this as a parental control feature so parents have another option that allows them to decide when their children are allowed to play their video games.
After all underaged children are mainly the responsibility of their legal guardia
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> children should not be playing video games after their bed time
I am curious. Can you think of any scenario where kid should be allowed to play video games after their bed time? I can help you by telling that I can invent multiple scenarios.
Easy to crack (Score:1)
Just point the camera at the picture of an adult. Done.
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OMG you've just cracked the iPhone's security system. Quickly call the FBI!.
Hint: Next time you start a sentence with "Easy to" first ask yourself if it is so easy, have developers thought of it.
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They aren't trying to recognize individual faces as far as I can tell, just using facial recognition algorithms to detect age.
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Yeah, that will work. NOT.
When I was a senior in high school, I looked like I was 12. When I was a senior in college, I looked like I was 15. The last time someone asked me for my age at an R-rated movie, I was 28 or 29. I've known multiple women in their mid-twenties who could have passed for 15, and I've known girls as young as 12 who could have passed for adults. If they really are trying to determine age algorithmically in a generic way, then the entire concept is completely and utterly doomed.
The
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It doesn't have to be perfect, but they still have to sell hardware. Any design mistake that causes even 1% of buyers to return a product is generally considered to be a huge financial catastrophe.
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But if you can follow the policy by doing something really simple, why would you try to follow the policy by trying to do something that's essentially impossible?
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Nanny state (Score:3)
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Parents give their kids permission to game
Except in many cases they don't, and just like the states where kids can drink in the presence of parents kids are none the less not allowed to go out and buy alcohol even if their parents gave them permission. These kids of rules... well softer and far less nanny state kinds of rules than a gaming ban get put in place because kids circumvent parents.
And honestly I'm not sure what is worse, government rules dictating what kids should and shouldn't do, or helicopter parents.
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On the other hand many parents would appreciate a rule like this because it means their kids can't simply grind them down with nagging until they say yes. Kids, a lot like cats, have nothing better to do than pester their owners/parents until they get what they want.
Some shops found that they actually had more visits from parents with kids when they took the sweets away from the checkout area because parents like not having to say no 20 times to a bored 6 year old.
Re: Nanny state. Really? (Score:2)
This happened in China, and this seems like a great time and place to explain what "nanny state" means? This is the country with government run social credit scores and integrated facial recognition everywhere? But video game age limits, that's so nanny state?
Pointing towards China and saying oh look at that, that's an example of nanny statism going on, is like pointing at Mao Zedong and saying oooh look, there's a great example of what bullying looks like folks!
Really dude, really?
Training Session (Score:2)
So basically Chinese kids having to cope with this, the Great Firewall and other measure means these kids are leaps and bounds ahead of western kids who only have to deal with parental controls on the home gateway.
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Wait until you see how parenting in China works. East Asian "tiger moms" in the West have nothing on their native grandmother versions back in China.
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That's the same government that conducts genocide as a matter of same "societal harmony" state policy as this. Hint: just because authoritarian government believes that it can parent better than tiger moms and tiger grandmoms doesn't mean it's right.
Facial recognition... (Score:2)
Facial recognition, high-tech approach to parental responsibility.
And when kids at Halloween, wear a mask? Or simply do like in Columbo episode, make a mask of a picture (I remember how creepy it looked to see "Columbo" sitting in his Peugot, when the real Columbo pointed it out to the murderer. "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star")...and wear it.
Of course when being high-tech "nanny" causes a profit drop, suddenly a "glitch" in the system will be introduced and shared among the kids on some discussion f
Guess source of the quote (Score:3)
Overreach? (Score:2)
A simple timer could do that and it won't get fooled by a Miss Piggy mask.
Just a pretext to collect more facial data (Score:2)
Any half smart kid would use a mask to get around it and within hours the workaround will spread to all other kids.
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Everyone, the above response is an example of a Wumao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] running out of valid arguments. LOL
Try again next time kiddo.
Re: Just a pretext to collect more facial data (Score:2)
Hey kiddos. I learned this new Chinese word to mock people who agree with China or disagree with my mocking of anything China related. I am going to use it all the time now to really show those people how smart and cultured I am so that everyone is clear that i know what I am talking about.
And cue... (Score:2)
owner of the reddit account (Score:1)