The problem is that then you need the government’s permission to procreate. There’s always the valid concern that the government would prevent you from having children to remove some undesirable trait from the population and justify it as being a danger to a child. I know you described basic competency skills, but there would always exist a very credible threat of it being politicized.

In fact, this already happens for things like queer couples being rejected for adopting children or the Uyghur population being quietly genocided in China. And Eugenics was historically practiced such that criminals would be sterilized as part of their punishment.

It’s worth pointing out that governments already intervene with unqualified parents by removing the child from the household. Shifting the burden of proof from the government needing to show neglect to parents needing to prove themselves worthy is a dangerous amount of authority to cede to a centralized, corruptible power.

Also, it’s not clear how you handle unlicensed parents. People are going to have unsafe sex no matter how illegal you make it. Would you push for preemptively sterilizing everyone and trusting it can be reversed after a license is acquired? Forcing abortions? Confiscating the child after birth?

I took a look and I see their point. Rule 3 sounds like there’s effectively a black list of known unreliable sources. And even then, it sounds like there would be exceptions based on the mods’ discretion. I wouldn’t expect a blanket ban on blogs from reading that.

Personally, I think requiring a reputable source for an article is a good policy for the community, at least when one is available, as in this case. And it does sound like it is being enforced objectively. We are in an age where information is weaponized and fake news and engagement is manufactured maliciously. It makes sense to be skeptical of sources with no reputation on the line.

But I do think the requirement should be clarified in the rules better to match what it means de facto. If nothing else, it would simplify things when someone complains again in the future. And including a list of repeat offender sites could be helpful so long as it’s clear that it is not exhaustive. Just mentioning that MBFC is used to judge sources could reduce the amount of unreliable posts in the first place.

For reference, these are the rules I see:

Rules:

1. Be civil. Disagreements happen, that does not give you the right to personally insult each other.

2. No racism or bigotry.

3. Posts from sources that aren’t known to be incredibly biased for either side of the spectrum are preferred. If this is not an option, you may post from whatever source you have as long as it is relevant to this community.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article title.

5. No spam, self-promotion, or trolling.

Instance-wide rules always apply.

The UN hasn’t explicitly called it genocide, but if you assume China’s motivation is to reduce their population, it seems hard to argue its actions wouldn’t qualify. Widespread arbitrary imprisonment and certainly forced sterilization would meet at least condition 4 of their requirement. The Genocide Convention’s definition is below, emphasis mine:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

You could argue they don’t actually intend to reduce the Uyghur population, but it’s hard to accept that a surge in the Xinjiang region’s sterilization rate and the birth rate being cut in half over the course of three years are just anti-terrorism measures.

Deterence is not a great strategy for preventing crime. Criminals don’t actually do much cost benefit analysis before committing a crime; they will consider the chances they have of getting caught, but not the severity of the punishment. Rehabilitation programs are worth considering over punitive justice so long as they are more effective at preventing recidivism, which is certainly an interest for a state.