8 ms·

China’s Social Credit: Rewards and Punishments

78 points by vermilingua 9y ago

prolikewhoa 9y ago
Looks to be legitimate. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar... Unreal. How long until this takes root in the west? What happens to people who don't use social media, don't necessarily like being social, and just want to sit at home and play video games or reball some BGP's? Does this mean they're a bad person?
- whatshisface 9y ago
  Instead of asking if it will ever take root here, maybe it's time to start talking about how to make sure it never does.
  - jadedhacker 9y ago
    Too late. This is just an expansion of the concept of credit scores which people already find offensive. I agree with you though. For example, in some states, you can be denied a job based on your credit score. https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-me-based-on-my-credit.html https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-me-... http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit-checks/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit-checks/in...
    - whatshisface 9y ago
      Fraud is bad when individuals and corporations do it, but when your government begins to commit fraud it's a lot worse. It's bad when individuals suppress ideas, but when the government starts censoring things that the powerful few find uncomfortable it's a lot worse. So, with social scores: when corporations organize to share information against people it's bad, but when the government formalizes, legalizes and makes mandatory the entire system it's a whole lot worse.
      - jadedhacker 9y ago
        I'm inclined to agree with you but consider this alternative point of view. The credit system in the country is essentially mandatory and fraud isn't necessary for it to hurt ordinary people. If someone (a poor person!) is denied a job (with which they hoped to remedy their poverty!) based on the ordinary operation of the credit system with correct information in it irrelevant to the position, that's a travesty. Power and who has it can be more subtle than guns. However, I agree that the guns add quite a kick. One step deeper though one might interrogate the extent to which government power is used to support corporations. People get shot and go to jail over such things.
        whatshisface 9y ago
        The government has a little more than the guns (in the form of the police, the jails), it also has the ability to force resolutions to prisoner's dilemmas and tragedies of the commons that are currently working in our favor. If corporations ever cut out a group of people that should actually be served (for example, denying loans to capable individuals on grounds that have nothing to do with their financial stability), then there is a Schindler's list motivation for corporations to "defect" and include the group. Then, the market dynamics make everyone else a lot worse off unless they also defect. America already has one experience with a mechanism that can coordinate non-equilibrium behaviors among companies that would individually benefit from defecting: racism. Government fiat is another such mechanism, and as far as the similarities go, it could produce something of the same results. (Groups cut out of society with nowhere to turn.)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- omgbananas 9y ago
  Using a lot of bandwidth? That's a mark against your social credit score. You don't have a Facebook account? That's minus some points too. Cable companies can already track what and how much you watch. If you use Steam for video games, they can track what you play and for how long. Soon your xBox or Playstation won't work without an internet connection.
gruez 9y ago
>Citizens with low social credit would also be prohibited from enrolling their children at high-paying private schools that's the most fucked up part. sure, I can see why you want to punish people who smoke on train platforms, but punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? would it be justifiable during a bank robbery hostage situation for the state to take their kids/spouse/family hostage for leverage? >Being publicly named as a bad citizen. [...] However, people will be notified by the courts before they are added to the list, and are allowed to appeal against the decision within ten days of receiving the notification. I'm sure that the CCP will provide a fair and impartial trial for those people.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  > punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? Morally? It's not. Pragmatically? Keeps the parents in line, just like physically threatening their family would, but without the cost of all that personal attention.
  - ilkan 9y ago
    False. This is unjustified double punishment for kids whose parents don't care. I notice you tried to justify immorality by splitting the response into "morally" and "pragmatically". Implying both (1) morality can be argued against in this case and (2) that it has the weaker argument. I also disagree with this approach here.
    - duncan_bayne 9y ago
      > I notice you tried to justify immorality Hmmm. Perhaps I wasn't clear. You are reading a _lot_ more into my post than I intended. I'm an Objectivist Libertarian who thinks that (a) what China is doing in this case is positively evil, and (b) that any level of resistance up and to including violent revolution on the part of the Chinese people would be entirely moral and justified. By explaining the pragmatic 'justification' for this abhorrent system, I was trying to make the point that the Chinese Government gives exactly no shits about the morality involved; they want to exercise power, and this is seen as a cost-effective means of doing so. The implied point I was _trying_ to make (and, clearly, failing) was that pragmatism in politics is the devil.
jknoepfler 9y ago
I'm so deeply disappointed by the Chinese people right now. Here China has an opportunity to enter the 21st century as a the world's most rapidly improving country with the world's biggest economy. Instead, this is the absolute worst of American-style private contractor bullshit (private prisons, etc.), rolled up with the absolute worst of Chinese-style opacity and oppressiveness. Who on earth would think that a hidden (known to few) objective function for being a good citizen would help create a better society? Why would anyone think that the private sector in China is even remotely transparent or credible enough to hold this kind of responsibility? Who on earth believes that China has the ability to administer this system with even a modicum of fairness (that might not be a shared value, to be fair)? Nothing is black and white on this earth, and I genuinely hope this can work, but I think it is a transparently awful idea and I am disappointed in any group of people who would yoke themselves to it. [edit] It's the worst of neither American private contractor bullshit or Chinese oppressiveness and opacity, that's a deep dark well that it would be pretty tough to scrape the bottom of. It's a crude fusion of both, and it's going to hurt a lot of people in ways little and big, but it isn't the worst of either.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Keep an eye on that Second Amendment of yours. Odds on anyone wanting to try something like this would want to disarm you first.
  - jknoepfler 9y ago
    I've never really understood liberal opposition to the possession of firearms in the United States, given the country's founding principles. That said, I'd be more concerned about the right to vote, the right of the free press, the 10th amendment (which why aren't people more angry about?), the right to privacy as currently understood by the courts, and the fact that class-action lawsuits on behalf of people harmed unlawfully by such a system would cripple any corporate version of it. I don't really understand the political spectrum in the United States, tbh. Obviously you need to be willing to take up arms against an oppressive federal government, should such a thing happen (and who would be deluded enough to think that a military coup would be categorically impossible in any country - if not now, what about a century from now?)
pxeboot 9y ago
Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode about this? Seems like a terrible idea, but will inevitably end up being required by many companies, just like credit scores.
- stuaxo 9y ago
  There are some really nice touches in this episode - everything is beige and inoffensive, all the cars look the same.
jknz 9y ago
Some thought on why an explicit social credit score might be better than the current system. The current system already has surveillance. And it's very likely that some hidden score system is already in place (because surveillance is basically useless without some kind of data-analaysis/filtering tools, which boils down to giving scores to people...) So with the current system, you may be denied government jobs or access to some services based on this hidden scoring system already in place. You will be denied but without knowing why, with no clues on how to fix this. With an explicit social score, contrary to the current system, you see your score going down whenever you do something that does not please the gov. You also get an explicit score increase or (whatever reward) if you manage to change your behavior to please the gov. This makes it possible to understand why your score might go down and to game the system to bring your score back to normal. Gaming the system and understanding how to regain access to denied services is not possible with the (probably) currently implemented hidden scores. Of course, I am fully against this type of surveillance and thankful of not living in such country. But the idea the the new, more explicit social credit scores will be worse than the current system can be challenged.
- vermilingua 9y ago
  I think you may be wrong, on a technicality. While such “shadow scores” may exist, that’s a part of security clearance. It would only be on applying for a clearance that your score is evaluated. So while you may be denied for a govt. or a specific service, it would only be because you did not pass the clearance you applied for; not because the establishment systematically measures your worth throughout your life. Disclaimer: I live in Australia, where the situation may or may not be the same as the US/Europe.
- Arbalest 9y ago
  There's a difference between institutional discrimination and casual discrimination. For a hidden system, it may only apply to a few scenarios, but if the information is widely available, everyone has the information with which to discriminate against you. Now that's a negative reinforcement spiral which has very few vectors of escape. Edit: to make matters worse, if someone knows you're being discriminated against, and know you know that, they have a lot more power to abuse against you, because you're likely a lot more desperate to recover any score.
roenxi 9y ago
Putting aside the idea that this is a bit creepy by western standards; it might also be a bad idea more generally. I'm reminded of Alan Turing; there was a really nice quote by some Briton to the tune of "If we had known he was gay we might have lost the war". There are a lot of social norms that simply haven't withstood the test of time. I look at the 10 Commandments and I think about half of them still hold for me. Linking social norms, which are significantly arbitrary, to a powerful surveillance state and enforcement? Ignoring the personal risk the citizens would face, this might have economic and military consequences to China's detriment.
- throwaway84742 9y ago
  Western cultures do a variant of the same thing. Your prospective employer will not only look stuff up about you online (over much of which you have no control), they will also run a pretty deep background check, and if that doesn’t work out in your favor your offer can be withdrawn. God forbid if you had any run-ins with the law, you’re screwed for the rest of your life. Bad credit rating could disqualify you from a lot of jobs as well. The major difference is that this is merely enabled by the government, not run by it.
pcr0 9y ago
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the Chinese national anthem still gets booed every football match [0]. This will be an interesting reunification to watch. [0]: http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-football-association-fined-again-fifa-booing-china http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-fo...
peter303 9y ago
The most important point was overlooked in this article: when your credit score is partly computed from the credit scores of your social links, you tend to form elitist cliques. People with less wealth or financial skill or poltical demerits are shunned. They far further behind because they cant make the better links that they would help them. I hear even family members disavow each sometimes.
fellellor 9y ago
This is how you brainwash an entire nation. Pavlovian techniques at their finest on display here. Kudos to China.

78 points by vermilingua 9y ago

Looks to be legitimate. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar... Unreal. How long until this takes root in the west? What happens to people who don't use social media, don't necessarily like being social, and just want to sit at home and play video games or reball some BGP's? Does this mean they're a bad person?

whatshisface 9y ago
Instead of asking if it will ever take root here, maybe it's time to start talking about how to make sure it never does.
- jadedhacker 9y ago
  Too late. This is just an expansion of the concept of credit scores which people already find offensive. I agree with you though. For example, in some states, you can be denied a job based on your credit score. https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-me-based-on-my-credit.html https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-me-... http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit-checks/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit-checks/in...
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    Fraud is bad when individuals and corporations do it, but when your government begins to commit fraud it's a lot worse. It's bad when individuals suppress ideas, but when the government starts censoring things that the powerful few find uncomfortable it's a lot worse. So, with social scores: when corporations organize to share information against people it's bad, but when the government formalizes, legalizes and makes mandatory the entire system it's a whole lot worse.
    - jadedhacker 9y ago
      I'm inclined to agree with you but consider this alternative point of view. The credit system in the country is essentially mandatory and fraud isn't necessary for it to hurt ordinary people. If someone (a poor person!) is denied a job (with which they hoped to remedy their poverty!) based on the ordinary operation of the credit system with correct information in it irrelevant to the position, that's a travesty. Power and who has it can be more subtle than guns. However, I agree that the guns add quite a kick. One step deeper though one might interrogate the extent to which government power is used to support corporations. People get shot and go to jail over such things.
      - whatshisface 9y ago
        The government has a little more than the guns (in the form of the police, the jails), it also has the ability to force resolutions to prisoner's dilemmas and tragedies of the commons that are currently working in our favor. If corporations ever cut out a group of people that should actually be served (for example, denying loans to capable individuals on grounds that have nothing to do with their financial stability), then there is a Schindler's list motivation for corporations to "defect" and include the group. Then, the market dynamics make everyone else a lot worse off unless they also defect. America already has one experience with a mechanism that can coordinate non-equilibrium behaviors among companies that would individually benefit from defecting: racism. Government fiat is another such mechanism, and as far as the similarities go, it could produce something of the same results. (Groups cut out of society with nowhere to turn.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
omgbananas 9y ago
Using a lot of bandwidth? That's a mark against your social credit score. You don't have a Facebook account? That's minus some points too. Cable companies can already track what and how much you watch. If you use Steam for video games, they can track what you play and for how long. Soon your xBox or Playstation won't work without an internet connection.

gruez 9y ago

>Citizens with low social credit would also be prohibited from enrolling their children at high-paying private schools that's the most fucked up part. sure, I can see why you want to punish people who smoke on train platforms, but punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? would it be justifiable during a bank robbery hostage situation for the state to take their kids/spouse/family hostage for leverage? >Being publicly named as a bad citizen. [...] However, people will be notified by the courts before they are added to the list, and are allowed to appeal against the decision within ten days of receiving the notification. I'm sure that the CCP will provide a fair and impartial trial for those people.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
> punishing children for their parents misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? Morally? It's not. Pragmatically? Keeps the parents in line, just like physically threatening their family would, but without the cost of all that personal attention.
- ilkan 9y ago
  False. This is unjustified double punishment for kids whose parents don't care. I notice you tried to justify immorality by splitting the response into "morally" and "pragmatically". Implying both (1) morality can be argued against in this case and (2) that it has the weaker argument. I also disagree with this approach here.
  - duncan_bayne 9y ago
    > I notice you tried to justify immorality Hmmm. Perhaps I wasn't clear. You are reading a _lot_ more into my post than I intended. I'm an Objectivist Libertarian who thinks that (a) what China is doing in this case is positively evil, and (b) that any level of resistance up and to including violent revolution on the part of the Chinese people would be entirely moral and justified. By explaining the pragmatic 'justification' for this abhorrent system, I was trying to make the point that the Chinese Government gives exactly no shits about the morality involved; they want to exercise power, and this is seen as a cost-effective means of doing so. The implied point I was _trying_ to make (and, clearly, failing) was that pragmatism in politics is the devil.

jknoepfler 9y ago

I'm so deeply disappointed by the Chinese people right now. Here China has an opportunity to enter the 21st century as a the world's most rapidly improving country with the world's biggest economy. Instead, this is the absolute worst of American-style private contractor bullshit (private prisons, etc.), rolled up with the absolute worst of Chinese-style opacity and oppressiveness. Who on earth would think that a hidden (known to few) objective function for being a good citizen would help create a better society? Why would anyone think that the private sector in China is even remotely transparent or credible enough to hold this kind of responsibility? Who on earth believes that China has the ability to administer this system with even a modicum of fairness (that might not be a shared value, to be fair)? Nothing is black and white on this earth, and I genuinely hope this can work, but I think it is a transparently awful idea and I am disappointed in any group of people who would yoke themselves to it. [edit] It's the worst of neither American private contractor bullshit or Chinese oppressiveness and opacity, that's a deep dark well that it would be pretty tough to scrape the bottom of. It's a crude fusion of both, and it's going to hurt a lot of people in ways little and big, but it isn't the worst of either.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
Keep an eye on that Second Amendment of yours. Odds on anyone wanting to try something like this would want to disarm you first.
- jknoepfler 9y ago
  I've never really understood liberal opposition to the possession of firearms in the United States, given the country's founding principles. That said, I'd be more concerned about the right to vote, the right of the free press, the 10th amendment (which why aren't people more angry about?), the right to privacy as currently understood by the courts, and the fact that class-action lawsuits on behalf of people harmed unlawfully by such a system would cripple any corporate version of it. I don't really understand the political spectrum in the United States, tbh. Obviously you need to be willing to take up arms against an oppressive federal government, should such a thing happen (and who would be deluded enough to think that a military coup would be categorically impossible in any country - if not now, what about a century from now?)

pxeboot 9y ago

Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode about this? Seems like a terrible idea, but will inevitably end up being required by many companies, just like credit scores.

stuaxo 9y ago
There are some really nice touches in this episode - everything is beige and inoffensive, all the cars look the same.

jknz 9y ago

Some thought on why an explicit social credit score might be better than the current system. The current system already has surveillance. And it's very likely that some hidden score system is already in place (because surveillance is basically useless without some kind of data-analaysis/filtering tools, which boils down to giving scores to people...) So with the current system, you may be denied government jobs or access to some services based on this hidden scoring system already in place. You will be denied but without knowing why, with no clues on how to fix this. With an explicit social score, contrary to the current system, you see your score going down whenever you do something that does not please the gov. You also get an explicit score increase or (whatever reward) if you manage to change your behavior to please the gov. This makes it possible to understand why your score might go down and to game the system to bring your score back to normal. Gaming the system and understanding how to regain access to denied services is not possible with the (probably) currently implemented hidden scores. Of course, I am fully against this type of surveillance and thankful of not living in such country. But the idea the the new, more explicit social credit scores will be worse than the current system can be challenged.

vermilingua 9y ago
I think you may be wrong, on a technicality. While such “shadow scores” may exist, that’s a part of security clearance. It would only be on applying for a clearance that your score is evaluated. So while you may be denied for a govt. or a specific service, it would only be because you did not pass the clearance you applied for; not because the establishment systematically measures your worth throughout your life. Disclaimer: I live in Australia, where the situation may or may not be the same as the US/Europe.
Arbalest 9y ago
There's a difference between institutional discrimination and casual discrimination. For a hidden system, it may only apply to a few scenarios, but if the information is widely available, everyone has the information with which to discriminate against you. Now that's a negative reinforcement spiral which has very few vectors of escape. Edit: to make matters worse, if someone knows you're being discriminated against, and know you know that, they have a lot more power to abuse against you, because you're likely a lot more desperate to recover any score.

roenxi 9y ago

Putting aside the idea that this is a bit creepy by western standards; it might also be a bad idea more generally. I'm reminded of Alan Turing; there was a really nice quote by some Briton to the tune of "If we had known he was gay we might have lost the war". There are a lot of social norms that simply haven't withstood the test of time. I look at the 10 Commandments and I think about half of them still hold for me. Linking social norms, which are significantly arbitrary, to a powerful surveillance state and enforcement? Ignoring the personal risk the citizens would face, this might have economic and military consequences to China's detriment.

throwaway84742 9y ago
Western cultures do a variant of the same thing. Your prospective employer will not only look stuff up about you online (over much of which you have no control), they will also run a pretty deep background check, and if that doesn’t work out in your favor your offer can be withdrawn. God forbid if you had any run-ins with the law, you’re screwed for the rest of your life. Bad credit rating could disqualify you from a lot of jobs as well. The major difference is that this is merely enabled by the government, not run by it.

pcr0 9y ago

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the Chinese national anthem still gets booed every football match [0]. This will be an interesting reunification to watch. [0]: http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-football-association-fined-again-fifa-booing-china http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-fo...

peter303 9y ago

The most important point was overlooked in this article: when your credit score is partly computed from the credit scores of your social links, you tend to form elitist cliques. People with less wealth or financial skill or poltical demerits are shunned. They far further behind because they cant make the better links that they would help them. I hear even family members disavow each sometimes.

fellellor 9y ago

This is how you brainwash an entire nation. Pavlovian techniques at their finest on display here. Kudos to China.