China’s Tencent turns to facial recognition to snag late-night child gamers

Tencent said it would also start requiring users to pass a facial recognition test when changing safety settings designed to let parents limit their children’s game usage, as ‘some children have stolen their parents’ phones’ to modify the settings. — Tencent

BEIJING: Chinese tech giant Tencent has rolled out a facial recognition “midnight patrol” function to root out children masquerading as adults to get around a government curfew on underage gamers.

China bans people under 18 from playing online games between 10pm and 8am, part of a raft of rules introduced to weed out the excesses of gaming culture among the youth, from worsening eyesight to online addiction.