I think this may have to do with the fact that China regulates social media with regard to its effect on society, whereas it's the wild west in English-speaking countries. I don't agree with all of their criteria for regulating media, but I feel like there's probably a good middle-ground to be reached. It's well-documented how harmful social media has been to people of all ages.

[–] rmrf@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

This might be a hot take, but I think it started with tying internet identities to real identities.

[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Unless I misunderstand, in China it's illegal to distribute VPNs, but simply using one and accessing the wider net is fine. That implementation isn't great, but it could also be a lot worse. Effectively it means anyone who's tech savvy enough can leave the walled garden whenever they like with practically no consequence. Though, it still requires some group of people assume the legal risk of setting up and hosting the VPN infrastructure.

I feel like there must be some means of achieving the same effect without criminalizing people just for providing a service. Like, defaulting to a garden of public and private webpages that meat the standard, but still with some means of leaving that garden provided you pass a minor techincal barrier to entry.

Also forcing every social media site and glorified-website-app to default to chronological sort every time you close the browser tab or leave the app. It's a simple change, but it would do a lot.