While China has many horrors (from the digital great wall, to Uyghurs and Tibet to abhorrent working conditions for internal migrants, lack of health and safety, little enforcement of environmental rules, ...) it seems at the same time that China dares to intervene when companies exploit consumers and try to get onto the addiction tracks. Gambling, drugs, short form videos (aka tiktok) and now banning human-like assistants that play on and manipulate our emotional machinery.

While I still wish all Chinese to finally have a democracy and liberties the rest of the world can still learn from this - the "nanny state" is needed when it's our psychology alone against thousands of professional programmers and psychologists trying to enslave our mind.