China's Tencent Employs Facial Recognition To Detect Minors in Top-Grossing Mobile Game (scmp.com)

AmiMoJo shares a report: Tencent Holdings, the world's top-grossing games publisher, will use facial recognition technology to detect minors amid tighter scrutiny by the Chinese government over concerns excessive video gaming is hurting public health. Tencent's blockbuster mobile title, Honour of Kings, will be the first to test the technology, with some 1,000 new users in Beijing and Shenzhen selected to verify their identities through camera checks, the company said in a statement. In mid-September, Tencent found that almost half of the 600 game-playing minors and their parents who took part in its survey doubted facial-recognition checks in games, according to the statement. Tencent said it hoped to see how to use facial recognition and unearth problems through the scheme.

Comments

If..

[fluffernutter]

If they capture a minor in his/her undies, will they be charged with child porn? Does anyone know where these go?

Re:If..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's their "pubic health" program.

Re:If..

[ShanghaiBill]

If they capture a minor in his/her undies, will they be charged with child porn?

No. China does not have the rule of law, and does not have an independent judiciary. If the CCP told them to do it, that makes it legal, regardless of any law.

Re:If..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, "they" ARE the government, so, no, they won't be charged.

But... WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do these bureaucrats care so much about other people?

The eternal struggle is between 2 groups:

* Those people who just want to be left alone.
* Those people who just don't want to leave you alone.

Re:But... WHY?

[ShanghaiBill]

Why do these bureaucrats care so much about other people?

Because in the Confucian world the interests of society come before the rights of the individual. Your right to play a game is subordinate to your obligation to contribute to society.

Re:But... WHY?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the Chinese aren't Confucian. The Confucian order has been pretty much dead since the late 19th - early 20th century. There may be a concept of "New Confucianism". But that's just academics wishing for a time gone by.

Parents do your job.

[bob4u2c]

Seriously, parents just watch what games your kid(s) are playing. Ie, raise you own kid(s), don't let some company decide whats best for you. If you don't think they should play that game, unstall/block it and tell your kid(s) why you blocked it.

As parents you should decide if your kid(s) playing Minecraft is teaching witchcraft or teaching abstract thinking. And since your decision only affects your kid(s), I'm free to parent how I like.

Why is it so hard to raise your own kid(s) instead of trying to find a technical solution that in the end just won't work to raise my kid(s)?

Re:Parents do your job.

[cascadingstylesheet]

Seriously, parents just watch what games your kid(s) are playing. Ie, raise you own kid(s), don't let some company decide whats best for you. If you don't think they should play that game, unstall/block it and tell your kid(s) why you blocked it. As parents you should decide if your kid(s) playing Minecraft is teaching witchcraft or teaching abstract thinking. And since your decision only affects your kid(s), I'm free to parent how I like. Why is it so hard to raise your own kid(s) instead of trying to find a technical solution that in the end just won't work to raise my kid(s)?

Because this is China, a communist country. You don't get to make the decisions there, the government gets to.

Re:Parents do your job.

[bob4u2c]

Because this is China, a communist country. You don't get to make the decisions there, the government gets to.

Wait, now I'm confused.

How could the government let these lazy kids play video games in the first place? Didn't the government decide that all happy citizens are citizens who contribute to the greater needs of the country? These kids need to be made an example of; ie disappear for 3 months and then come back to repay the government for their mis-deeds and beg for forgiveness. At least that is the next headline I expect to see.

Re:Parents do your job.

[Luckyo]

Control over citizenry is one of the key issues with communist government models. East Germans tried the informer path. Every seventh person was an informer. It didn't work. Soviets tried the less invasive but much more random methodology after de-Stalinisation. It didn't work either.

China's benefit is in the modern computerisation and rise of AI deep learning systems, which actually give it an edge that both aforementioned examples were lacking. They often had the information, but had no ability to meaningfully collate it. They were literally drowning in too much data in East Germany, and they just didn't have enough data and still got drowned in it in Soviet Union.

Chinese demonstrate that they understand this problem, and are actively working on a solution. Computers will handle the data collection and data collation, with people merely designing the way inputs are processed into outputs. This model of controlling age of gamers is one of the applied methods of doing this.

face mask

[hackingbear]

Then the minor can just buy a face mask and wear it at the start of the game. Of course, the game maker will just be happy about this loophole.

Re:face mask

[ShanghaiBill]

Then the minor can just buy a face mask and wear it at the start of the game.

1. Masks are easy to detect.
2. The check is not only at the start of the game.

Re:face mask

[Anonymous Coward]

This is also being put in to place by the most honorable PRC Gov't... While people in the US can feel OK to flip off sitting government with little issue.. You pull stuff like that in China and you disappear for awhile...

So, wearing a face mask and other ways to thwart this will likely be considered a punishable crime.

Re:face mask

[hackingbear]

Apparently, you've never been to China. Only got info fed by your mainstream media.

Re:face mask

[Tablizer]

https://www.123rf.com/photo_10...

Re:face mask

[ShanghaiBill]

China is not going to arrest anyone for spoofing a video game.

It is America, not China, that imprisons people for petty nonsense.

The incarceration rate in America is FOUR TIMES what it is in China.

Re:face mask

[Anonymous Coward]

Ffs. The system isn't going to magically be able to look at someones face and determine their age.

They have a database of most (nearly all?) citizens who own smart phones. When someone wears a mask and 'tricks' the facial recognition, at the best it will result in no match and no permission to play the game, and at the worst it will flag the user (whoever's phone it is) for review/discipline/lowered social credit score.

Re:face mask

[Luckyo]

You watch too much propaganda. What will happen is that leadership at workplace of the parents will have a talk with parents, causing them to lose face. Who will make a call to grandparents, who are raising the kid. Who will beat the kid senseless for making parents lose face.

Re:This might work in China, but never in America

[cyx]

Only kids would miss your reference, and then mod you down.

Eat it, Tencent--detected with no cameras!

Access to camera: DENIED

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly would I allow them access to my camera, if it asks?

Yes, modern android allows you to make the app think it has access, but not give it access anyway.
Especially if you run a rooted device with Xposed and stuff like that.

But whatever. People who install crAPPs don't have a brain to think about such things anyway.

Re:Access to camera: DENIED

[Luckyo]

Because you want to be able to play the game. Kids who just want to play games and who study for 12-14 hours a day under constant supervision from their parents and grandparents don't have time to learn (about) the things you're talking about, especially with regulated Chinese internet routinely making access to such things hard in the first place.

Re:Ching Chang Wing Wong

[Luckyo]

Central government cared for it for at least two decades. It's literally one of their priorities in several five year plans now.

You're confusing central government with regional government and regional corruption. China has a problem similar to other large states in the region like Russia and India. Central government is generally working for the people and is far less corrupt (note: relative to, not in absolute terms) than regional governments. Problem is, bureaucracy is so hard to punch through from the top, that decisions made at the top often end up having a diametrically opposed effect at the regional level. It's how they had that central governmental plan to slow down roll out of new coal plant capacity in China, and then reality where regional authorities keep allowing for massive amounts of plants to be constructed, utterly ignoring the central government.

Re:Ching Chang Wing Wong

[OpenSourceAllTheWay]

So regional governments and bureaucrats in China can go against the wishes of the great Communist Party of China without ending up in the Gulag? Seriously? They were told "don't build so many coal plants" from the top, but didn't listen? They'd be sent to prison or the firing squad. More likely, central government DID want those coal power plants built, but made it appear as though it had no hand in making the DECISION to have them built.

Re:Ching Chang Wing Wong

[Luckyo]

Thank you for venting your ignorance. That's not the way it works in any of the states I mentioned, because you can't purge the entire bureaucracy. Even Stalin couldn't do it at his peak of power. There are a tens of thousands of bureaucrats, in some cases hundreds of thousands who participate in decision making in these states and they are the only people who can keep the system running. At best you can hang one guy on the top, which incidentally, Xi tried to do over last few years.

It had no impact. Chinese bureaucracy keeps going.

This just in...

[thoughtlover]

sales of fake moustaches and beards in China suddenly skyrocket.