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China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4B citizens
- Leary 8y agoMaybe more western news pieces like this will cause the Chinese people to reconsider this system.
- Krasnol 8y agoProbably not, because they won't be technically able to see them. So maybe they are not for them in the first place?
- forgottenpass 8y agoYeah, it sounds positively dystopian to us. But replace "Hu" with "Alex Jones" and see how many in the west keep up their sympathy. >In 2015, Hu lost a defamation case after he accused an official of extortion. >Hu’s social media accounts, where he published much of his investigative journalism, have also been shut down.
- neaden 8y agoLet me know when Hu starts claiming grieving parents are crisis actors and selling unproven diet treatments.
- merpnderp 8y agoWhere would you draw the line on protected speech? CNN admitted to misstating the news on three major stories last week - are they getting close to Alex Jones territory?
- neaden 8y agoNo, not even remotely.
- liftbigweights 8y agoThat is your line for censorship? My god. Also, all diet treatments are unproven. And red bull does not give me wings.
- neaden 8y agoAlex Jones purposefully tells harmful lies to vulnerable people in order to get them to distrust the institutions around them so he can sell them harmful junk. It's literally his business model and it's immoral and dangerous. And he didn't even get censored, he got kicked off some platforms like twitter. To compare him to an actual victim of censorship who was trying to get the truth out is an example of bothsidesm that is attempting to masquerade as rational thought.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- forgottenpass 8y agoI'm not trying to "bothsides." Jones is a clown. I'm trying to get people to engage their systems thinking so that we can learn lessons from China's mistakes before we go down the same exact path. Of course they're not identical situations. Look beyond the regional cultural standards and different bodies exercising power. Notice that they're both a hegemony enforcing the status quo against their flavor of "fake news".
- neaden 8y agoBut one is the truth and the other is lies. Also one is getting kicked off Twitter, the other is going to prison. It's the same thing that the government could falsely arrest me tomorrow for a murder I didn't commit, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start protesting when they arrest actual murderers.
- liftbigweights 8y ago> Alex Jones purposefully tells harmful lies to vulnerable people in order to get them to distrust the institutions He tells his share of lies. But he also tells his share of truth. No different than any other "news" organization. If he is telling lies, then point it out, debate them. Don't censor them. If lying is grounds for censorship, then every newspaper needs to be shutdown. They all lie or fabricate from time to time. Did we forget about the iraq war and the media lies that allowed it to happen? Or brian williams or the recent florence weather channel farce? > around them so he can sell them harmful junk How is that any different than CNN showing pharmaceuticals ad on their network to their vulnerable elderly viewership? Or news putting gambling ads? Should MSNBC or Foxnews be banned because they have soda or potato chip ads? I'd say alex jones is responsible for a minuscule amount of the harmful junk in this country compared to the mainstream media. > And he didn't even get censored, he got kicked off some platforms like twitter. That's called censorship. > To compare him to an actual victim of censorship who was trying to get the truth out is an example of bothsidesm that is attempting to masquerade as rational thought. He is a victim of censorship. You may support him being censored, but to say he wasn't censored is an outright lie. You can censor people telling truth and people telling lies. It's both censorship. My god stop watching so much CNN. It's great that you distrust alex jones. Everyone should. But everyone should distrust all media personalities. Skepticism is a very healthy part of citizenship and democracy. And censorship is evil in a democracy. Nothing more harmful than censorship and the people who support it for their political agenda. Nazis, fascists, communists and all extremists love censorship for a reason. Democracies love free speech for a reason.
- mc32 8y agoWhy would they care and why should they care what we think? They should make their own self-assessment and figure out what works form them by themselves. Ther system evolved from different badic principles and that has arrived at diffetent conclusions. That said, things can radically change as in Japan during WWii —> Pracetime transition, but that requires buy-in from all involved to avoid what usually happens during radical change (Tsarist to Sowiet; Dynasty —> Republic —> PRC).
- merpnderp 8y agoHow are they going to figure out what works for them? Vote for the individual who best represents their views? How exactly to individuals even get a say in "what works for them"?
- mc32 8y agoThat’s a bit tangential. Even if you got them all exposed to our opinions, what does that do in terms of actionability? They would be in the same place. Change has to come from within.
- erentz 8y agoUnfortunately for the Chinese people, being caught caring about this system probably lowers your score 100 points. That’s how tyrannical systems work.
- just_steve_h 8y agoI sure am glad I live in a country (the U.S.) where my movements, purchases, and public movements aren't tracked!
- sschueller 8y ago/s ? You are being tracked. From devices in stores that watch for wifi/Bluetooth devices to credit card companies building profiles of their card holders.
- taobility 8y agoyour purchase been tracked by some private companies, not the government
- dnqthao 8y agoI guess you should put the /sarcasm/ tag so that people can understand your point.
- z0r 8y agoI can't foresee this backfiring at all!
- hzhou321 8y agoIt is a system that results in rich and poor, where rich are holding stakes and incentivized to maintain and grow their status and the poor are insignificant to do anything. Then there is the vast middle class who don't see the poor but only aspires for the rich. Such system exploits human nature and has proven to be quite stable -- isn't that any society's goal after all? It takes compassion and faith in truth, in sufficiently large doses, to challenge such systems.
- stcredzero 8y agoWhere in history has there been a system that didn't either 1) Result in rich and poor or 2) Result in oppression by force? Egalitarianism doesn't scale past around 450 people without the introduction of some form of hierarchy. It takes compassion and faith in truth, in sufficiently large doses, to challenge such systems. Principles can be used to challenge such systems from within. The overall history of the United States is a good example of this. Also, the history of the past several years is a testament to what happens when principles are forgotten in favor of feelings.
- booleandilemma 8y ago“Buying too much alcohol might suggest dependence; she’ll lose a couple of points.” Credit card companies are already doing things like this. What one of the executives there did, he looked at how people were using Canadian Tire credit cards and tracking what products they actually purchased. Then he found out that people, who for instance buy premium wild bird seed, it turns out that they very infrequently went bad on their debts. Whereas people who bought chrome accessories for their car, they walked away from their debts more frequently. https://www.marketplace.org/2009/05/15/business/how-credit-card-companies-track-you https://www.marketplace.org/2009/05/15/business/how-credit-c...
- blacksmith_tb 8y agoMy cynical take would be that alcoholics (and other people whose self-destructive habits you could mine from their purchase behavior) would be less likely to make waves or rebel, so I'd have thought you'd lose a couple of points for never buying any alcohol... Also odd that "buying nappies" earns you points for being responsible, presumably the Great Database already knows you are a parent?
- djohnston 8y agowhat if it actually works out fine long term and our western sensibilities were just wrong in the context of china
- bovermyer 8y agoThat depends on your definition of "fine," I suppose.
- taobility 8y agoEvery country has its own culture, social acknowledge. You can't understand Chinese's respect for privacy, just like Chinese can't understand American's obsession with guns.
- merpnderp 8y agoHow could it possibly not be abused to gain power? What checks and balances are there? Out of all the past data points we have throughout history, which one points to governments with unchecked power not abusing it? And is there any more powerful example of unchecked power than an unelected state single party government who can monitor every action of every individual and unvoice/unperson them with the click of a button?
- erentz 8y agoThe parent has the flaw that a lot of people do. They don’t seem to understand that not everyone is a mostly decent person and that there exist bad actors in any population. You can’t get away from this in any society, for example what percentage are psychopaths? That means if you create systems (like this) that eventually bad actors can exploit for themselves, they will, and they do. It’s not a conspiracy. It doesn’t happen right away. But slowly it’ll happen that the few percent can use these tools in ways to serve themselves over the interests of the wider population. (I don’t know why this is hard to comprehend, just look at the bad actors around you in your $dayjob.)
- throwaway_trust 8y agoWhat was the reasoning behind social credit system? To keep track of bad actors or create surveillance nation? On a side note, this is what happens when "technocrats" become the ruling class in overwhelming majority. Ability to apply technical solution to societal problems. Most of the China's ruling class are technocrats. We need anthropologists, social scientists, philosophers as law makers. Yes technocrats should be there in the mix too but they alone won't fix societal problems.
- chaostheory 8y agoProbably both. It's no secret that China has long aspired to transform into Singapore - clean and sterile. CCP leaders have been openly talking about it for decades now. Compared to the mainland, Singapore doesn't have large issues with stuff like crime or social order. imo Singapore has achieved it via a technological Big Bro state.
- Animats 8y agoChina has had a "police census" for centuries. Under communism, they had the dang'an, a lifetime work record maintained by each citizen's work unit. But with a more mobile population and more private employers, the paper based dang'an system didn't scale. So, now the social credit system. It's not new, just more automated.
- api 8y agoCan anyone Chinese or who knows more about China provide any insight into why they're doing this? Is there some local political reality? My reading is that they're worried about their explosive GDP growth leveling out and the political instability a debt crisis might cause.
- adventured 8y agoIt's the logical continuation of what they were already doing. Nothing has fundamentally changed, the technology has gotten better, and in some cases enabled an elaboration of the Chinese police state. They're merely putting new technology to work as it becomes available. If you want to watch for change in behavior - increasing or reducing of oppression - in the Chinese system, look at consequences and restrictions (ie applied action derived from their policing systems), rather than things like surveillance broadly. They will always max out surveillence and awareness where they can (the people de facto have no rights, so these things are not viewed as abuses of existing rights), short of becoming a liberal Western-style democracy (which isn't going to happen). The consequences and oppression/restrictions will change depending on the regime's aims, that's where you can best judge the nature of a given government that is in power. To use a classic surveillence example - the US Government during the Hoover era didn't voluntarily restrict its reach. They were heavily limited by the technology of the day in what they could do. As technological limitations lifted, the expansion of surveillence leapt forward accordingly. Nothing actually changed, Hoover would have been doing what the NSA is doing today, if he had the technology back then.
- echevil 8y agoI'm speaking as a Chinese citizen who is totally in favor of this. Here's some perspective I can give: "credit system" is far less established than countries like US, and private companies are generally much less trusted by the government and by the people (which is the opposite to the US). Some big private companies like Alibaba has started to create credit systems themselves, but the state owned banks and law enforcement would only use something backed by the government. The "social credit system" it actually not that different from other credit systems excepted it is managed by government. It's really needed now given that there was a rising debt default problem -> Without a credit system, many people thought they can just delete the app where they borrowed money and get away with it. It became a crisis when a lot of this happened at the same time. Surveillance is a separate topic. It's one of the technology advances that made law enforcement easier (like DNA samples are much more used nowadays in identifying criminals). There has been reports that criminals being captured with these new tools. It's something that western people fears a lot, so all the western reports focuses on the negative side of it and exaggerate it many times more.
- forthwall 8y agoAs much as it seems like a foreign concept, I wonder what parallels can we derive from a state-backed social credit system to say something like our corporate-backed financial credit scores. We see that companies from health insurers to cell phone providers are already adopting skimming through your or your demographic's purchase history to see if you are worthy of success or not. Not defending China, but boogeymen pieces like this evoke responses like this is a truly non-western concept and not just a "hardcore" version of what we have
- Froyoh 8y agoStraight outta Black Mirror
- icantdrive55 8y agoIf it stopped corruption, and nepotism I might not be so opposed to this invasive immoral technology. I grew up not liking to be photographed. It was a combination of being homely, but it was more? There's probally a deeper psychological reason? I got through college, and high school with only one picture of myself. I've noticed when I'm out and about; I'm very aware of cameras. I'm aware of the shutterbug. Hell, I used to use that word in a endearing way? Not anymore. I find myself judging people over the amount of pictures they snap daily. I know most of it's good natured. I wouldn't be suprised to see the fear of being photographed in the DSM. It's probally already there? As usual, I'm yacking as a semi-spoiled American. I should be commenting on the article. This brief article did affected me. I know China is a Communist country. I just imagine the future, and it doesn't look rosy. My hope is we (USA) pass more privacy laws. My hope is one day the person who pulls out the camera/phone will be socially frowned upon. I thought it might be the next social fau pau, but it isn't? At least in my part of the world? I'm rambling, and sorry--not feeling well today.
- soneil 8y agoI'm genuinely curious to see how this works out. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm not part of it - but I can't help be fascinated. Growing up, we cared what the neighbours thought. They were our "social score". If we skipped school, it'd be noticed. If we misbehaved, they knew it. And little old ladies ensured bad news travelled faster that twitter. Now life feels anonymous, and it feels like this has been lost. Anonymity, while sometimes valuable, often leads to toxic behaviour online. A lot of things we'd never have dreamt of doing with the 'old lady brigade' judging us. And now the real world feels much more anonymous, and I fear the same happening here too. On the face of it, it seems like China have figured out how to scale the little old ladies. This could be horribly interesting, or simply horrible. But I think I'm glad to see someone (else) give it a shot.
- erentz 8y agoI can’t understand why anybody would be glad. People in China will have their lives ruined by this. This kind of thing has been bad when any previous authoritarian regime did it. So tracking/controlling people doesn’t just become okay or potentially good because you’re using computers. The Stasi etc would’ve loved this.
- echevil 8y agoAs a Chinese citizen who lived in the US for a while, I'm totally in favor of this, and especially when I go back to China. We don't value "freedom" as much as most westerners, and the social credit system is there to make existing laws better enforced, so bad actors can really get punished as they should.
- erentz 8y agoThere are hundreds of thousands currently sitting (possibly dying) in "reeducation camps" in Xinjiang, I guess they don't value "freedom" either. The social credit system is just a continuation of the current authoritarian controls, and will be used to further chill any chance of dissenting opinion. This might be fine to you individually if you find yourself on the right side of everything, but clearly not everyone does.
- liftbigweights 8y agoDidn't we have this exact same story yesterday? And the day before? And the day before that? When the EU, Australia and Canada does it, the news frames it positively as combating "hate" speech. When china does it, it's digital dictatorship. For an industry, especially so in australia, that loves censorship and digital dictatorship, the media sure do love to criticize china about theirs. Maybe it's just envy.
- woodandsteel 8y agoDefenders say this is just the latest version of traditional Chinese ways, but that is not the case. Traditionally social trust and good behavior was enforced by the whole network of social relations and basic values. But in the modern era this has broken down, in part because China has gone through 4 different basic political and economic systems in the last century, and is now on its fifth. So the government is now trying to enforce good behavior and social trust from the top down. Unfortunately, unlike in Confucianism, there is no way to ensure the people at the top are trustworthy, so the whole thing will likely become quite dysfunctional at some point.
- woodandsteel 8y agoLet me add a couple of points. Chinese defend this system in part because if they were to criticize it they would be punished by the government. But beyond that, in China there is no real thought about or discussion of basic political philosophy and so people don't even know how to go about it, they can only repeat what they have been told.
- 07d046 8y agoAccording to this guy, the Western media has a habit of getting this story very wrong: https://twitter.com/ChinaLawTransl8/status/1042040372766027781 https://twitter.com/ChinaLawTransl8/status/10420403727660277... There are so many things wrong with China and the world today, there is simply no reason to make things up, and much of what is in this piece is wild speculation or outright fabrication, belittling the real struggles of some featured in it. More: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/seeing-chinese-social-credit-through-a-glass-darkly/?lang=en https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/seeing-chinese-social-cred...
- qkrthnu 8y agoThe results will absolutely be total success. How could it result in anything but success? Anyone who complains about any aspect of the social score system will have their score lowered until they are effectively silenced. Marginalizing minority views and other edge-cases is a feature of the system. I feel very sad that there is likely to be an entire generation of Chinese whom are crushed into the most extreme pressure to conform and obey. #Resist #QuestionAuthority #Disobey