While in the past, parents who had a girl first were more likely to keep trying to have children in an effort to have a boy, the opposite is now true — couples who have a girl first are less likely to keep trying.

This line suggests that parents place less value on boys and it’s possible this will lead to them failing to vaccinate them or delaying seeking medical advice when they’re sick. I haven’t looked into it beyond that.

Shouldn’t the author of this piece be concerned that boys will be aborted and neglected in favour of girls? It’s interesting that the thought didn’t occur to him or her. They already found evidence of this by mentioning the higher number of couples who try again after having a boy rather than a girl. It’s not a huge leap to think they might not want to continue the pregnancy if it’s another boy.

I was expecting a much stronger argument based on the headline.

Personally I’d prefer regulation on how social media is structured and how algorithms operate. First thing I’d do is ban infinite scroll, which corporations like because it increases ‘engagement’ whilst harming the quality of the experience for their users.

They only want to ban social media and even then only the big ones with an exception for youtube.

These AI models require huge amounts of electricity. If governments wanted to they could destroy their ability to operate, like when China banned bitcoin mining.

They use spare hydro power during the off season so the net impact on the environment is negligible.

It’s shameful that we can’t think of something better to do with all that electricity. Data centers, supercomputers even LLMs would create something of social value.

Some are some aren’t. This crackdown kicked off after a Chinese celebrity was kidnapped by one of these gangs after being lured to Bangkok with an offer of an acting gig. The fact that multiple compounds were raided but not a single gangster was arrested stinks. The fact that it’s assumed all the workers are victims with hearts as pure as snow is bullshit. The AP isn’t even covering half the story in this article.

The Thais are making a big show of shutting down a couple of compounds in the hopes that the Chinese tourists will come back and forgive them for turning a blind eye for so long but they can’t even be bothered to identify or investigate the people who run them.

Many of them knowingly and willingly signed up to work as scammers and deserve to be sent to prison before they are sent home. I have little sympathy for them.

The headline is misleading, many of these people knew full well that they were going to work in scam centers they were just naive or ignorant about the horrendous working conditions that awaited them. They should be sent to court and then prison before they are sent home.

The fact that 300,000 people work in this industry makes it impossible for them all to be victims of subterfuge by traffickers.

Some of us live overseas and need to make official calls to government agencies and companies from time to time.

When someone makes use of a service and doesn’t pay afterwards that is considered to be theft even if the provider hasn’t been deprived on anything. For example, if I snuck into an art gallery without paying I won’t remove anything tangible since the gallery’s overheads and running costs were fixed long before I arrived.

A better word would be copyright infringement if the AI is making use of other works without a license or other permission. Based on my reading of the article it appears those involved only fed the AI works in the public domain or works that they had created themselves. The letter of complaint appears to be signed by artists who are unaware of these circumstances.

This is from Q4 when ad spending doubles in the run up to Christmas. Q1 would probably earn half as much.

Plus it was an election year so loads of money from campaign ads, too.

Chinese people are much more nationalistic than their government is. If it were a democracy it would have invaded Taiwan long ago.

It’s good to see people engaging in cultural exchange and learning about each other through the app. Rednote sounds like an interesting place; most online spaces are dominated by men with relatively few women.

They ban reporting on the stock market if it closes 64 or 89 points lower than it opened. https://www.france24.com/en/20190604-8964-china-stocks-reference-tiananmen-anniversary-again

The BBC spoke to someone who acquired a large following shortly after signing up.

Some social media users tell the BBC that they find themselves scrolling on RedNote more than TikTok. “Even if TikTok does stay I will continue to use my platform I’ve created on RedNote,” Tennessee tech worker Sydney Crawley told the BBC. Ms Crawley said she got over 6,000 followers within 24 hours of creating her RedNote account. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2475l7zpqyo

The Guardian says over 500,000. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/14/tiktok-ban-rednote-app

trans-inclusive radical feminists

TIRFs?

Personally I prefer the company of trans-agnostic practicing sexists or TAPS.

The thread is about tiktok being banned in Albania. I thought you might be familiar with Australia’s threats to ban tiktok whilst ignoring the crimes other tech companies commit and making no effort to protect Australians from them.

Did you miss the comment I made about Instagram? That was specifically about the content of the site having a negative impact on users.

I commented on your post so yeah I think I managed to click on it. Did you bother to read mine and think of a coherent response before typing? Nah just ignore my efforts to put this in a wider context and dismiss me as a tankie. I’ll just dismiss you as racist since you only complain when it’s a Chinese company doing it.

I’m all in favour of robust privacy protections like GDPR. I don’t support yellow peril bullshit when a Chinese company successfully operates in the same space that US companies do.