568
Chinese Courts Rule Companies Cannot Fire Workers Simply to Replace Them With AI
(www.caixinglobal.com)
Good
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
568 points (94.2% liked)
Technology
84257 readers
3249 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Why? This will hold back automation dramatically
There are so many speech restrictions and humans rights violations in China that scare the hell out of me, but then I see rulings like this and their progress on robotics and tech and I think "Well, they are doing something right..." I hope one day there is more free speech for people in China who deserve to be able to say what they want.
It's a great ruling because companies that would normally favor efficiency and profit increases are in a better position to take these existing workers and utilize them in different ways than just have everyone fired en masse and then somehow the market will sort it out. Even under classical economic theories, governments are supposed to regulate externalities and AI displacing workers too rapidly could be considered a type of externality.
There are so many speech restrictions and humans rights violations in China that scare the hell out of me
I hear an earful about how horrible and repressive the Chinese state government is to its citizens from the outside, largely by national media talking heads and Big Data surveillance company flaks. Meanwhile, the consequences of talking shit on the Chinese internet - account suspension/deactivation, getting in trouble with your employer/school possibly with the threat of firing/expulsion, periodic investigation by state police for threats of violence, possible restrictions on business/travel because you've been added to a "watch list", potential for arrest on some bullshit charge - seem to be all the same kinds of consequences periodically doled out to western citizens.
I'm told Americans have "free speech". But then the Supreme Court lays so many caveats down that even a silly toothless joke is strictly prohibited under US laws. I'm told Chinese officials are brutal and draconian and mean-spirited, but they don't have anything approaching our prison population. I haven't seen evidence of any kind of mob-rule social media gang dedicated to doxing Chinese dissidents, either. So they manage to stay ahead of Canary Mission and Project Veritas in that regard.
I hope one day there is more free speech for people in China who deserve to be able to say what they want.
I want to know what that's supposed to look like in practice. Where can I find the Free Speech that the Evil Foreign Country is supposed to one day get?
Because if the dream is an American style system of free expression... What are we pinning for, really? Chinese Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson? Uyghurs given the Palestine Action treatment? An independent Taiwan that enjoys all the diplomatic kindness we afford to our neighbors down in Haiti and Cuba?
What are we even asking for?
I think if you look towards northern Europe instead of the US you'll find better references and goals.
if you look towards northern Europe instead of the US
The UK has some of the most repressive speech laws on Earth. Germany isn't far behind. Given the groundswell of fascist tendency across the Scandinavian bloc, I would not bank on them serving as a model much longer. An uptick in Muslim immigration has kicked off a tidal wave of Islamophobia, which now dominates their domestic politics.
Now that you mention it I definitely want Chinese tucker Carlson and Alex jones
I definitely want Chinese tucker Carlson and Alex jones
It’s crazy that a country with no free speech has tens of thousands of protests every year.
I saw that protests are free as long as they are against the local government. People can complain online and in-person against local authorities and demand central government step in to save them, too. But if the rethoric starts going to "central government is wrong", then it gets supressed
Do you have a source that says that happens in today’s China? I know that Falun Gong is suppressed, but they are literally a CIA-funded group created to undermine the state.
Falun Gong have allied with foreign intelligence services, but they weren't created by those services. Originally, the organization was allied with the Communist Party and on generally good terms. They only ran afoul of the Chinese Communists when Falun Gong leaders became embroiled in increasingly noxious financial and abuse scandals. Not unlike how the Catholic Church's status soured across Europe and the US East Coast following the slew of child sex abuse allegations.
That's when Falun Gong officials started fleeing to the NATO block and issuing increasingly hysterical allegations about the conduct of the CCP towards its members.
Thanks for the correction. The point remains that today's CCP mostly limits itself to suppressing foreign actors. And why should it need to suppress its own citizens, anyways? The CCP has a 95.5% approval rate. The Chinese people are utterly committed to their socialist project, and rightly view it as a creation to be proud of.
I heard online that it's illegal to be against Christianity in America, as well as it being illegal to be against fascism, or 'anti fascist' in the USA as you'll be labelled a domestic terrorist. I heard in America that the cops won't kill you if you are a white person walking at night but not if you are a black teenager. I heard in America that the government will allow your father to shoot you until you die if you disagree with him politically but ask to see his gun. I heard in America you will be killed by the government for being ~~homeless~~ poor and there's nothing anyone will do about it.
But America is where freedom is. If you live in any conditions freer than that, you are actually in a less free country than America because actually America is actually freer than any other country actually.
I heard in America that the government will allow your father to shoot you until you die if you disagree with him politically but ask to see his gun.
I think this is a great illustration of the kind of propaganda we see online wrt any "Evil Foreign Country". In this case, it was the British Press reporting hysterically about a father hosting his daughter's family for Thanksgiving, bragging about being a Trump supporter, bragging about owning a gun, and then accidentally shooting his daughter (literally a room away from the rest of the family) because he's the exact kind of dipshit that doesn't know how to handle a firearm professionally. Grand Jury threw the charges out precisely because it was so obvious that he'd been negligent rather than willful. The rest of the family confirms it. But the Brits report it like it was an Honor Killing that the local government endorsed and facilitated.
We see this kind of manipulation of events in US media - wrt China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, France, Mexico, Antifa, Immigrants, Brown People, you name it - any time national news organizations decide they need to flog a particular government or demographic group.
Hardly unique to the US. But when you're getting the full Clockwork Orange, it's hard to know what it feels like to be an outsider looking in.
I understand the parallel, but all you said can be confirmed or denied by several sources I have access to. I don't have alternative sources for most of the claims about China. Could you provide them? When I read about these things, it seemed trustworthy.
Also, I'm not even american, chill. I am not chinese either, I don't have a horse in this race. Both can burn in nuclear winter as far as I care
by several sources I have access to
Does your government limit your access to any sources?
But also all of those things are true and verifiable. That's freedom in America baby—free to be rich and if you're not filthy rich and just middle class or above you're good as long as you're white and male. Not so free for many other people.
What I mean by "have access to" is that information about china is scarce unless you are reading in chinese and talking to chinese people. I will be visiting there later this year btw and have family that goes frequently for business, but that doesn't really show political reality
No, third world country that doesn't give a shit and isn't technically capable of doing anything to that scale (maybe I saw a DNS block once? And only on the ISP DNS)
There are some hardcore pro-china people on lemmy. I made a joke about disappearing someone for re-education (like what happened to Jack Ma, co-founder of Ali-baba) and people downvoted shit out of it and said my American media is lying, idk what I'm talking about, etc etc.
I'm not saying the American media is a beacon of journalistic integrity or anything but it's telling they won't even admit these things happen in China.
...You spread a conspiracy theory not even supported by mainstream US outlets and people reacted badly?!
Jack Ma was not 'disappeared.' He was, in fact, brought up on charges that were later dismissed due to his cooperation. This was public news. Because Jack Ma attempted to bribe members of the CPC in order to gain political support for his incredibly unpopular and stupid idea of lessening safety regulations to bring Chinese markets closer to the 'freedom' of the US market.
His political movement failed, his bribery attempts were exposed, and unfortunately, he was not punished for them beyond having to issue an apology. Honestly it's a shame China didn't actually punish him like your conspiracy theory suggests, given the amount of damage he attempted to do to the Chinese economy and integrity of the People's congress.
I just spent 5 minutes googling and didn’t find a single source that says Jack Ma was disappeared for re-education. Not even right-wing sources like Business Insider and Forbes.
It's almost as if the speech restrictions and human rights violations are grossly exaggerated or entirely misreported by companies that are exclusively funded by the US intelligence community. . .
Don't get me wrong, some still do exist (especially on the company side of things). Since, you know, it's a country consisting of 1/7th of humanity; but equally it's pretty silly to think 1/7th of humanity is too stupid to do anything about a single supposedly hyper repressive government that allegedly doesn't let them speak against it.
You mean like how the West mashes people skulls in for holding a banner against genocide?
I bet in China you can talk about the genocide in Gaza without getting beaten, jailed, or deported.
Try saying Tibet on a bus stop, and watch your ass getting hauled to the nearest police station in like 30 seconds.
Perhaps. And if not that, I'm sure there are other forbidden topics there.
Just like in the West.
The difference is that the West pretends to care about free speech and even uses it as an excuse to bomb/sanction/invade other countries.
view more: next ›