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China blacklists millions from booking flights as 'social credit' introduced

306 points by apatters 8y ago

mk1111 8y ago
You guys just don’t know CCP. All they want is to controll everyone, eliminate dissenters and make everyone scared. It has nothing to do with social credit. —— from a chinese citizen
SubiculumCode 8y ago
US and China are not equivalent
garyclarke27 8y ago
Horrific predicted tech enabled dystopia now in China. Where next? what if airlines taxis and hotels shared ratings, would the west be so different? I hate Uber Airbnb pestering me for a rating every trip and the fact that I am rated as well. I don’t know or care what my rating is, but my wife does, she was upset recently by an Airbnb landlord in Belgrade, she gave us a bad rating because we had not deep cleaned the place?? The apartment was awful and we had to leave at 5.OO am and the lift didn’t work, last thing on my mind was hovering, no hotel would expect such, but maybe in the future only perfect behaviour will allow one to travel.
- baybal2 8y ago
  Well, nonpersonhood is nothing new to China. Tenth of millions of people in China can't even get an ID because they don't have birth certificates, and without that you can't legally have a bank account, have a phone number, receive education, receive medical care, travel, own property, have family or even immigrate away from China. And the West has nevertheless kept quiet for long 28 years.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    You make it sound like something Chinese government purposefully did, when in fact, those people were simply never registered by their parents -- to avoid the fee for having a child above quota. >The group was never officially registered on the country’s household registration record system, known as hukou, which is closely linked to a person’s legal identity. That means they didn’t officially exist—until recently. On Friday (March 24), China’s Ministry of Public Security, the government department in charge of hukou registrations, announced that they had helped register the 14 million. https://qz.com/941240/china-keeps-finding-millions-of-people-who-never-officially-existed/ https://qz.com/941240/china-keeps-finding-millions-of-people...
    - baybal2 8y ago
      That's not the case, aside from that, having ones papers taken was and is an almost mundane punishment used againts very ordinary people. There are way, way more such non-enpersonned people than just second children, children of single women, or children from marriages of other "non-persons." It is just this time, with the social credit, the state has finally got balls to go after high class bourgeois from megacities, and lower end elites.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    If you want to see non personhood, take a look at how falun gong are treated.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  >... no hotel would expect such ... Sure, and you and your wife were perfectly free to book a hotel as opposed to an AirBnB (which is NOT a hotel).
- iagooar 8y ago
  I thought Airbnb charges an extra for the final cleaning?
  - gpvos 8y ago
    It depends. I was asked to hoover before leaving too, recently.
  - glenneroo 8y ago
    They do, however most of my recent Airbnbs rentals have started requesting (via attached info email and/or the info-book on premises) to wash the dishes, change/take off the bedding sheets and in a couple cases, to wipe specific areas down. It feels like renters are continually pushing the boundaries of what they can ask of guests/tenants.
    - omegabravo 8y ago
      How interesting, I just assumed everyone cleaned up after themselves. I always do the dishes and tidy any mess I may have left. I'll gladly remove the bedding if requested, that only takes a few seconds. Perhaps it's a cultural thing.
      - glenneroo 8y ago
        Considering that Airbnb is generally competing with hotels, which expect nothing of their guests, I tend to approach Airbnb with a similar mentality in regards to cleanliness, granted some of my stays were truly amazing homes where I took extra care to clean up after myself. But I'm far from being a slob and I actually really like doing dishes. It's mostly a matter of principle - why should I pay a cleaning fee and have to clean? This can be particularly frustrating when staying only 1-2 nights where the cleaning fee can be as high as renting for just 1 night.
- sjg007 8y ago
  You should have also reported the apartment as being awful to AirBnB.
kbad1000 8y ago
Isn't it more like criminals or serious offenders can't fly? Will you allow a person who can possibly hijack the plane?
- Majestic121 8y ago
  No, not necessarily. As pointed out in another comment : "Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online."
  - jaclaz 8y ago
    >No, not necessarily. >As pointed out in another comment : "Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones ... Well, last time someone lighted a cigarette on a plane ... https://nypost.com/2018/05/30/plane-makes-emergency-landing-after-passenger-lit-cigarette/ https://nypost.com/2018/05/30/plane-makes-emergency-landing-...
    - privong 8y ago
      > Well, last time someone lighted a cigarette on a plane ... There are also designated non-smoking zones that are not due to immediate (as opposed to long-term) safety concerns.
      - shaobo 8y ago
        The references linked in the article specifically mentions smoking on trains and planes.
  - shaobo 8y ago
    The devil is always in the detail. The "buying too many video games" line came from the gamification aspect of a social network owned by a private enterprise and has nothing to do with the government scheme. And even they have backpedaled from that claim: "Hu Tao, Zhima Credit’s general manager, paints a different picture now. She says the app doesn’t monitor social media posts “nor does it attempt to measure qualitative characteristics like character, honesty, or moral value.” Zhima Credit is not a pilot for the social credit system and doesn’t share data with the government without users’ consent, she says." from https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-soci... And the "posting fake news online" line actually refers to "spreading false information about terrorism" which quite a bit more serious.
kylnew 8y ago
> People are awarded credit points for activities such as undertaking volunteer work and giving blood donations while those who violate traffic laws and charge “under-the-table” fees are punished. > Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online. This reminds me a lot of that Black Mirror episode where everyone upvotes and downvotes each other in contribution to a social credit system that prevents a girl from traveling and being treated kindly by anyone
- Shivetya 8y ago
  soon China will go straight to Larry Niven's The Jigsaw Man [1] where sentences for crimes include forced donation of all organs. this includes traffic offenses and the like. On a different tact, the US is just as guilty of this with the over the top of punishment of those convicted of sex crimes where you can be publicly embarrassed by law enforcement after you served your time. Where you can be told where you can live and not live or even go. Considering the power it gives over one group of people it is not hard to see how it will expand to other crimes [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jigsaw_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jigsaw_Man
  - nswest23 8y ago
    holy smokes false equivalencies!
- KnightOfWords 8y ago
  I had a shock when, the day after seeing that episode, I read a news item about China's proposed social credit system.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  That black mirror system is p2p when China's system is centralized. I believe the black mirror system is worse.
  - PMan74 8y ago
ultim8k 8y ago
Why do people still live there (apart from those who cannot move)?
- gtirloni 8y ago
  Where should 1.4bn go? Can they severe family ties that easily? Do they speak another language? Do they have the money for it? And more importantly, do they care that much? I think there are a fair big number of reasons why one wouldn't want to leave their homeland.
- NedIsakoff 8y ago
  Money and lifestyle.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  Probably because the regime doesn't actively affect most people's lives much more than a regular government. It's just people who speak out or act out that get oppressed. This is just me assuming, but is guess that China is OK for quiet, well behaved unquestioning citizens.
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    The social credit score goes way beyond speaking out. It touches all the minor infractions, speeding tickets, jaywalking, not paying your rent or other debt on time, etc.
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      This has only just been implemented though, so we've yet to see the reaction of the populace.
      - jobigoud 8y ago
        Parts of it are already in place. You can listen to this Planet Money episode #871 from last month where they interview a guy that has his mug displayed on a billboard and people hear a warning message when they call his phone, because he couldn't repay a loan. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/26/661163105/episode-871-blacklisted-in-china https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/26/661163105/epis...
bananatron 8y ago
Black Mirror activated
arvinsim 8y ago
Interesting that there seems many posts that shows China in an unfavorable light lately.... In any case, this is one of the things that you thought you only see in fiction. It's chilling to realize that it's real.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
It's interesting that this seems so futuristic and dystopic yet in reading about the specifics it seems oddly reminiscent to social systems many centuries past. In particular it seems to effect similar results to what exile would have had at one time. But exile lost any meaning as the world become more globalized and connected -- where you physically are no longer really means anything. This system would enable the consequences of exile, but with national effect. In a world with a perfectly impartial and objective government, I don't think this is a bad idea at all. The reason it's bad is because governments are made up of people, and people are corrupt. While it may initially be genuinely motivated by helping to improve society, over time it will devolve into a tool for special (and government) interests to incentivize actions that are to their benefit, and punish those against it -- regardless of the objective societal impact of those actions.
- walterbell 8y ago
  > similar results to what exile would have had at one time Can people on the list leave the country?
  - gnode 8y ago
    Yes; China no longer has exit visas. You just might not be able to take the most comfortable form of transport. The travel ban only seems to apply to domestic flights as far as I can tell.
pelagic_sky 8y ago
Last time I had read about this topic the focus was mostly on people who had defaulted on loans. One of the punishments was to have their face/name posted on a billboard publicly shaming them. I wonder if people still didn't pay back the loans, but did public service, if that would improve their score?
b1r6 8y ago
Isn't this bad from an economic perspective? I thought the gov't wanted to encourage spending and increase the velocity of their money. This directly hinders that.
- farazzz 8y ago
  Indirectly it could increase spending as they are preventing people from leaving and spending their money overseas
  - NedIsakoff 8y ago
    It will be used to promote good spending: money spend on Chinese goods and services. De-promote bad spending: foreign goods.
ladw 8y ago
In this system, is it possible to have a negative balance?
- jobigoud 8y ago
  I don't know the answer but if there is a floor at 0, that would mean at this point you have nothing to loose, so that could backfire. But you probably get incarcerated before you reach some threshold level.
  - blbviviv 8y ago
    HN has fault habdlers in place for accounts with karma going too far below zero. It was a hellban at -13 for my old account. I did keep writing for weeks before I noticed, the exercise of which was still rewarding in a way, and I still receive few answers now. Sometimes I suspect mods to the visibillity. I reinterpretted rangeban to mean banned beyond a certain range (as opposed to how it is commonly used: the ban of a whole range of possible identities).
- blbviviv 8y ago
  That's relative, isn't it? Below average is effectively negative for most purposes. Contrary, the Root Mean Square of a sinusoid AC supply can't go negative, for example. Economy (or socio...) is maybe not that simple, but still based on a balance between giving and receiving. What's interesting then is the average of the slope: zero for AC pretty much by definition. While stability is important, growth is too, economically speaking, so the derivative would need to be normalized under an average, so we are back to square one. That's to say, of course people can be on the decline.
gpvos 8y ago
One of the problems is that this is yet another system that can be corrupted. The rich will be able to buy themselves a high social credit rating, while the poor suffer.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  And how is this different from any society?
  - gpvos 8y ago
    Not very, admittedly. But this system is a huge step in the wrong direction.
miohtama 8y ago
While China has a bad record in human rights, I suggest to apply a lot of source criticism what comes to "social credit system." Especially here in Hacker News comments where discussion is generally more intelligent. Here is more in-depth and fact based article about the topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/amp/?__twitter_impression=true https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  What facts in the original article does your article correct? Its main point is just that there isn't a single unified ranking, which the OP article doesn't seem to claim.
- Kaveren 8y ago
  > "and the admitted student who was erroneously denied his place at a university due to his father’s failure to pay back a bank loan." It seems like you can strike "erroneously" from that sentence, since the source it cites doesn't imply it was a mistake at all. Collective punishment is worth criticizing. As per usual, when implementing some Orwellian scheme, there will be a crowd that states there's nothing to worry about, and that people are over-reacting, and that it's really not so bad after all. I wonder what the social credit score of Chinese dissidents will look like. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-affects-childs-university-enrolment-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-affects-...
- stefan_ 8y ago
  Chinese cities literally use face recognition to publicly shame jaywalkers with their name on big screens: https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2174564/facial-recognition-catches-chinas-air-con-queen-dong-mingzhu https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2174564/facial-... Bad record on human rights doesn't exactly cover it when the full stupidity of that fathoms on you. Jaywalking in itself is a manufactured crime.
- 8y ago
will_brown 8y ago
Well here in the US we have an actual credit system in place. And since basic necessities are often dependent on credit rating (employment; housing purchaes ; rentals; vehicle financing/lease) it’s pretty dystopian. Not to mention for nearly 20 years now we have had secret no fly lists (no due process to get on or off) and even secret kill lists (no due process), I think it’s just another way to skin the cat, and maybe we should look at our-dystopian-selves in light of outrage at our foreign friends. Edit: I think here just as there the majority will have “good credit” and actually like having an nearly permenant underclass...so just as here, I don’t think there will be much incentive to change there either.
- bitexploder 8y ago
  I don’t think there is much equivalency here. The credit system is a pain, but it is also very simple to have good credit. Anyone, even someone with little money can have good credit. Even if you have medical debt you can maintain your credit rating. People may not know how to do it, but it isn’t too hard. The privacy aspects of it suck, but it just isn’t that dystopian and it’s usage is relatively narrow in society. Secret no fly lists: impact a very small slice of the population. Try to find more than a few instances of legitimate travelers being blocked, which is something you can do with freedom of speech and freedom of press. I think less than 2000 are us citizens. The program in China is going to disenfranchise entire slices of their population and further limit their social mobility. Secret kill lists are for terrorits. We don’t kill our own citizens. I’m an Enlightenment since everyone deserves due process, but in a defending our national interests sense, that can never be the case and never has been. Our systems aren’t perfect, but every first world nation has some system to track your financial behavior and it impacts you negatively if you don’t make your payments. I just don’t see any strong relationship to the oppression in China and what happens in the US. Our systems aren’t perfect and your criticism has merit, but not as a comparison to China on this topic.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    I'm sure you could also argue that it's easy to have a good score in China's system. Just be a good citizen.
mnw21cam 8y ago
It could be argued that the primary purpose of a government is to make things better for people (with deliberately broad/vague words used there). I'm not sure how this qualifies. There's certainly a lot of negative language in that article, and negative language has a habit of not making things better for people.
- tonysdg 8y ago
  > It could be argued that the primary purpose of a government is to make things better for people As I understand it, this notion only really came into vogue during the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. For much of human history, government served as a way for monarchs, emperors, and the ruling elite to maintain -- and expand -- their hold on power, regardless of what was best for the governed. Indeed, we still see remnants of this in pretty much every government on the planet -- some just are less subtle than others. Arguably, we've spent the last 3 centuries trying to subvert this process and bend it toward, as you put it, making things "better" for all.
- gnode 8y ago
  > I'm not sure how this qualifies The idea is that social credit discourages behaviour which is bad for people (e.g. traffic violations and small-scale tax evasion) and that makes things better for people. I think it's easy to see how this could be effective, but the criticism is really about fairness (due-process). Proponents would probably argue that the consequences are relatively small compared to traditional criminal justice (going to jail; execution) so it doesn't matter, and the streamlining of justice outweighs the disadvantages.
ElBarto 8y ago
Beyond the obvious issues and extreme aims stated in the article, such a system is also a new, interesting take on the problem of 'crime and punishment' that might be food for thought.
creep 8y ago
This is obviously going to be an unpopular sentiment, but I am somewhat excited to observe the results, and I'm glad this is happening during my time on Earth. Yes, it is a horrible thought, but in many ways inevitable: if the tech exists, it will be used for both good and evil. Better that other societies can see the outcome sooner rather than later.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  I felt the same. If it was not for the many lives it will ruin it would be a very interesting experiment to watch. And ponder about the myriad of unintended consequences that will arise. Like the reported false positive of the model on a bus advert being repeatedly charged for jaywalking.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > We will arrive at a moment of sufficent self-alienation where we can contemplate our own destruction [as a species] as in a static spectacle. -- Walter Benjamin So we're repeating the Nazis now, gladly, because that's easier than learning from those who made all that effort, saw and went through so much atrocities and suffering, to to learn from that, and to relay that to us, to impress the importance of it on us? I'm so not onboard with that. > We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. -- Hannah Arendt You (like many) are kinda saying yes, it's unpopular and horrible, but "it would happen anyway". Notice how this is exactly the logic of totalitarianism, an abdication of personal responsibility. Saying "I won't fight it because it will happen anyway" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. > [The method of infallible prediction] is foolproof only after the movements have seized power. Then all debate about the truth or falsity of a totalitarian dictator’s prediction is as weird as arguing with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive – since by killing the person in question the murderer can promptly provide proof of the correctness of his statement. The only valid argument under such conditions is promptly to rescue the person whose death is predicted. Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. The assertion that the Moscow subway is the only one in the world is a lie only so long as the Bolsheviks have not the power to destroy all the others. In other words, the method of infallible prediction, more than any other totalitarian propaganda device, betrays its ultimate goal of world conquest, since only in a world completely under his control could the totalitarian ruler possibly realize all his lies and make true all his prophecies. -- Hannah Arendt, both quotes from "The Origins of Totalitarianism" And by the time you find out there's nothing to be glad about because it's just a spiral of control and fear and anti-intellectualism, with abusers and sadists having free pick of the litter, that won't matter anymore. There will be no allies to defeat the Nazis from the outside this time. There might be no "after". As for societies seeing "outcomes", as you observe "results" (these are people we're talking about here), keep in mind how much of what the Nazis did didn't go to plan. The death camps were supposed to be completely removed from the face of the Earth, just like many villages they razed. If Hitler hadn't started a war, or had limited it, the world still wouldn't know. It's not like we know everything that's going on in China, by a long, long shot. Just like we don't know about the Abu Ghraibs about which we never heard, and so on. To play with fire to learn about fire, let's leave that in the early 20th century, I beg of you. We have books and other documentation.
gexla 8y ago
Wow, the top thing on my mind this morning was that the CIA was able to listen in on a phone call from the Saudi head of state. Now this. I have already been thinking about the possible necessity of a decentralized personas. If an employer wants to see my office persona, then I don't want those people to see my gaming persona. No reason to connect these things to a central identity. Decentralized personas are natural in the entertainment world where you take on different characters. Authors might publish under a different name. Now even a Twitter bot with a crap AI can be a popular persona. As negative as a turn of events as this is, it could be a positive in odd sort of way in which we might view hackers blowing open vulnerabilities. This software, like any can spread like FB - crawling across the globe and no extra cost to the goons running it. I wonder what my score in China might be even though I don't live there. Maybe next, Valenzuela. Now is the time to construct a defense - if even possible.
- jld89 8y ago
  Valenzuela? Really?
  - gexla 8y ago
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/chinese-tech-giant-zte-helps-venezuela-develop-fatherland-card/10503736 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/chinese-tech-giant-zt...
    - ByThyGrace 8y ago
      I think GP was dumbfounded by the mis-spelling of Venezuela than actually asking for more information.
fsloth 8y ago
As a non-chinese 'westerner', to my understanding the important background to this culturally is that Chinese culture has been traditionally much more legalistic than western culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy). It has lots of nuances but the most important difference, if compared to western view of the justice system and the rights of state, is that the most important thing in a legalistic system is to punish those that break the law, and other considerations like individuals right to a fair proceeding and so on, are secondary. I think this social credit system is the perfect manifestation of the legalistic frame of mind. The system is built so that those that step out of the line are punished. Western humanistic philosophy is quite new when compared to how chinese state has been ruled for millenias. I'm not saying this to make any value propositions into one direction or the other - just that there is quite a lot of cultural background here that Europeans and anglosaxons might not be aware of.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I think this is a valid observation, and I hadn't made the link yet. Legalism has been used since the very first Chinese emperors to keep the population in check. It's a tool of oppression and arguably no place has a richer history of tools of oppression than China. Xi must be thinking "hey, it worked for millennia, why stop now?"
- throwaway548u65 8y ago
  Yet in practice, I’ve had the opposite experience. In China, when you break some rule or law, the police are much more lenient and forgiving. First time offenders (of minor crimes) always just get warnings. Even if the law requires a fine or some punishment, most cops will let you go after a stern lecturing. But in the US, once the bureaucracy kicks in, then you have to follow the letter of the law. There is very little compassion. It’s about punishment, not re-education. Perhaps it’s different in Europe, but that’s my experience in China and the US.
Confiks 8y ago
A lot of people in here reference Black Mirror, but it also made me think of ST:VOYs Critical Care [1] (which has plot holes you can just as well drive through). [1] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Care_(episode) http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Care_(episode)
jmartrican 8y ago
I think the biggest problem with this is that citizens that want to speak out about the government will now be more easily blackballed. So now the government can more easily repress a revolution. I suspect this means that the Communist Party of China will most likely remain in power for a lot longer than their natural shelf-life. When this party makes mistakes and misjudgments, what would happen now? The people will not be able to over-throw or speak out. The people will just have to eat the costs and hope the party does not screw up too much. Basically, the Communist Party has removed one of its last checks to power, internal revolt.
- monochromatic 8y ago
  Surely this is the main goal of such a system.
ziont 8y ago
Neo-confucianism is now digitized.
cm2187 8y ago
The way I understand this social credit system, it is trying to emulate at a scale of a one billion population the social control you had in a small XVIII century village. Basically what forces you to behave is not so much the law than the fear of contempt from your peers, which could impact every aspect of your life. And I can't help thinking that while it may be efficient at forcing people to not behave like a jerk, it will also have the same effect than for a XVIII century village: a high degree of conformism, that supresses any evolution or innovation. It may be the desired effect by the current rulers, preventing any political challenge. But I think it will also lead to an inexorable decline of the Chinese society.
- bicubic 8y ago
  >forcing people to not behave like a jerk It doesn't force people to not behave like a jerk, it could just as easily lead to a nation of jerks. It forces people to strictly act within a tiny zone at the center of the Overton window[0]. At scale, it means that natural ideological progress will significantly slow down. Any ideas or actions outside the norm will be culled. It's a move to homogenise the masses and allow the party to more easily set the general direction of 'desired' behaviours. This is pretty clearly the goal first and foremost. Stopping people from being jerks is just the marketing label. The set of measures used to determine social credit will change over the next two decades and will become an ever tighter definition of what the party wants its citizens to be. The current criteria are just the entrée that was determined to be palatable to the masses. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- inawarminister 8y ago
  Ah, the cycles of Chinese dynasties, seem to be as eternal as the culture itself.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mattdanger 8y ago
For those interested in getting a high level of how China's Social Credit System works, NPR's Planet Money did a good show on the topic last month. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/09/655921710/chinas-social-credit-system https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/09/655921710/chin...
lumber-pail 8y ago
Think of the upside if your status followed you everywhere you went, and instead of relying on human decency you could expect treatment in proportion to your behavior. Something like this will inevitably arrive in the West due to human desire for status. Not much different from a thousand little decisions you make every day getting dressed and walking down the street that show the world who you are and what your values are. Now conveniently bundled and accessible to all. Our grandchildren will wonder how we did business online without it.
- shadowxs76 8y ago
  I consider this to be a potentially terrifying idea. Maybe if "status" were rigorously kept to measurements of honesty and reliability that are as objective and unbiased as possible, I could see it working reasonably well but the much more probable reality would be one of crushing conformity to established social trends and a tendency toward ostracizing people who don't follow along with them, even if those trends (by virtue of being trends) aren't at all reasonably objective measurements of good, bad or moral in a person.
skrebbel 8y ago
I'm disgusted by the comments in this thread that go "culture!", "tradition!", "philosophy!" to explain why this really isn't that much of a problem. So because Chinese rulers have oppressed and mistreated their people for so long that their methods have become ingrained in the national psyche, it's somehow more OK? George Orwell predicted that "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever". He thought he was making a dystopian prediction, a warning of sorts, but he could've just as easily called it a history lesson about China. Sure, many other places, most places in fact, have horrible histories, with evil rulers vastly outnumbering the even somewhat good ones, but China is unique in that it's been all about oppressing and abusing the population as heavily as possible, without pause, ever since the first emperors gave the country its foreign name. A non-stop tradition of oppression doesn't somehow make new oppression less bad. NOTE: Nothing against the Chinese culture or people. I'm extremely fond of lots of Chinese things, not in the least Chinese humor for which I have a particularly soft spot. I love working with Chinese people, I love meeting Chinese people. It makes me sad that such a wonderful place and a wonderful culture can also have such a horrible tradition of oppression.
- mavdi 8y ago
  Historical context of a country matters a lot when judging the extent of a surveillance problem. Chinese are terrified of chaos and disorder, which has in the past has led to civil wars. For them the first priority is keeping the status quo. Just take a look at the death toll of these wars: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloodiest-conflicts-in-chinese-history-2014-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloodiest-conflicts-in-chine... 25 Million casualties, and that's in the 17th century. Compare that to the absolute carnage of Syria, which has had less than half a million casualties.
  - Juliate 8y ago
    That's not a valid excuse for a totalitarian, unfair system. Because these systems have all been torn down by some kind of civil war - there is no other way, because of the nature of power and the structures it uses.
  - 8y ago
Kaveren 8y ago
China is approaching a nightmarish dystopian society, if it hasn't reached that already. I'm glad I live in a country where I can spend however much money I feel like on video games without being targeted by an oppressive government. You just have to love a country where you can be murdered by the government for selling marijuana, yet if you abstain from alcohol for religious reasons you are an enemy of the state and must be turned into authorities. Authoritarianism of all forms must be opposed worldwide. Who is to say the West won't be subjugated to such systems a couple decades from now, if we don't stand up for freedoms with vigor?
- iliketosleep 8y ago
  I'm afraid that by the time people wake up to this, it will already be too late. Authoritarianism backed by high tech is a permanent nightmare come true. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems unstoppable - not enough people seem to really care. It's a weakness of human psychology, we are too caught up in the short-term, but in this case the long-term consequences will be terminal.
codedokode 8y ago
They say that the system helps to punish for violating traffic laws or evading taxes. But why police and courts cannot deal with this? Maybe because the real purpose is something else? Also, in some countries there are similar systems, where your rights might be restricted without court's judgement or right for appeal. For example, in Russia, if you are suspected to be an extremist, you won't be able to withdraw money from your bank account. In other countries there are no-fly lists or potential terrorists lists which restrict people's rights without being able to defend themselves.
wozmirek 8y ago
While I'm terrified by the system, I do remember watching a BBC (I think?) report on this. There was a young Chinese woman there, who felt safer. This made me think - what would women - and women, not the young men (me being one) choose when given a choice of the social credit system or being able to walk around the city safe(r)? Quite general question, yet I do believe they would choose the latter; and I wouldn't blame them.
- paganel 8y ago
  "Feeling safer" has almost nothing to do with the Government watching you and it's almost entirely caused by the local social norms. Case in point and to partly answer your question: I have a woman colleague who has recently moved to London from Bucharest. She told me that while living in Bucharest she had no issue at all going back home alone at 2 or 3 in the morning, while in London she avoids going out all by herself after 8 PM, because she does not feel safe. Doesn't matter that London is one of the most camera-surveilled cities in the "Western" world while Bucharest has almost no cameras, all it matters is that there are more people in London ready to physically and verbally harass a person walking on the street all by her/himself compared to a city like Bucharest. I have no idea on how one would change those social norms, I'm just saying that adding cameras hasn't solved the issue and will probably not solve it.
  - wozmirek 8y ago
    Oh, I agree with you m8. I'm terrified with the surveillance stuff. I'd exchange then my "safe(r)" with "more sense of "safety"" (double quote deliberate). Side note, that colleague originates from Bucharest? Just wondering if it's the same with my wife who feels unsafe in Berlin while she feels safer in Krakow.
    - paganel 8y ago
      > Side note, that colleague originates from Bucharest? Yeap, she has lived her entire life until this summer in Bucharest (she's approaching 30 now), and she hasn't grow up and live in the "posh" parts of town, so to speak. > Just wondering if it's the same with my wife who feels unsafe in Berlin while she feels safer in Krakow. It's funny because said colleague (and friend) has moved out to London for a Polish guy, I guess that's where the better-paid jobs are.
virmundi 8y ago
Think about how great this will be in the US. Finally, we can tag people who think incorrectly. They can be given low scores. All those people in fly overstates can just remain there. Hopefully the thought of a 72 hour car ride to a civilized city will give them pause when promoting fake news like Bernie's plan for universal healthcare is bad. It will be a wonderful day for the country when we can correct their wrong-thoughts.
edejong 8y ago
China: judge, jury, executioner?
ancorevard 8y ago
Just imagine if the National Socialist party in Germany would have had this in the 1930-40s. They could have been even more “efficient” in taking out the various groups of people they found to be of “low social value”. For everyone but those who believe in powerful centralized governments this is a nightmare scenario.
dnomad 8y ago
Hilarious. I wasn't even done with the comment and it's already being rapidly downvoted. The total lack of intellectual integrity on HN is a sight to behold. It's really funny to watch the advocates of free speech and discussion rapidly downvote anything that contradicts their ideology.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- notyourwork 8y ago
  I down voted not because I disagree but because your comment is a rant and doesn't offer any justification to your perspective. Hand waving and saying go talk to people doesn't prove your point, it makes you sound silly.
  - dnomad 8y ago
    Sure. In a thread absolutely full of baseless rants my comment, which does provide an explanation and a link, was the one that jumped out you. Though it is aways interesting to see people like you can rationalize your censorious actions. It's too bad HN doesn't require a text explanation for downvoting. It wouldn't decrease the hypocrisy but it would provide some further insight into the hypocrisy.
    - notyourwork 8y ago
      I also took the time to read the linked article and it isn't substantiating your claim. A few thousand people from an oppressive nation were surveyed about their support (or lack thereof) for a nation sponsored system. Why would anyone be surprised by the outcome of that study. Furthermore, polls suggested Hillary Clinton was going to win the last election for US and who is the 45th president?
- Juliate 8y ago
  Praise for a totalitarian system is not acceptable, neither debatable. That's all. End of story. We kind of learned about that in Europe, the hard way, several times in XXth century (Italy, Germany, Russia, Soviet era invaded countries, Spain); some of us still having forgotten sadly. A social credit system that is used to expedite what is normally the responsibility of law, debate, judgement - and can then be used to impose arbitrarial rules from the state (don't be fooled about that) _is_ totalitarian per nature. It is even more that because it relies on automation. Don't use exceptionalism or pride to defend or justify such a system.
tivert 8y ago
They've already had parts of this in place for awhile. My aunt-in-law's friend has had difficulty traveling in China because she's mistakenly listed in the system as being some kind of Falun Gong leader through some kind of clerical error. She found out when she was on a bus going on vacation, and they pulled her off the bus once they scanned her national ID. She has no appeal and no way to correct the mistake. None of the police or officials she's talked to have done anything. She's just stuck with it.
methodover 8y ago
This may sound like a stupid question, but did the Chinese people vote for this? Was there a democratic process?
- tivert 8y ago
  > This may sound like a stupid question, but did the Chinese people vote for this? Was there a democratic process? Of course not. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...
noarchy 8y ago
Is the 50 cent party working overtime in these threads? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
rick22 8y ago
Its sad technology is being used for evil. What are the suggestions to a programmer who fears his native country might adopt such systems. Are there any open source projects focused on combating such systems ?
pgt 8y ago
What can I do as an engineer to alleviate this problem?
kaonashi 8y ago
I think I’d rather live under something like this than the opaque, private fico system.
Wilson14 8y ago
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306 points by apatters 8y ago

You guys just don’t know CCP. All they want is to controll everyone, eliminate dissenters and make everyone scared. It has nothing to do with social credit. —— from a chinese citizen

SubiculumCode 8y ago

US and China are not equivalent

garyclarke27 8y ago

Horrific predicted tech enabled dystopia now in China. Where next? what if airlines taxis and hotels shared ratings, would the west be so different? I hate Uber Airbnb pestering me for a rating every trip and the fact that I am rated as well. I don’t know or care what my rating is, but my wife does, she was upset recently by an Airbnb landlord in Belgrade, she gave us a bad rating because we had not deep cleaned the place?? The apartment was awful and we had to leave at 5.OO am and the lift didn’t work, last thing on my mind was hovering, no hotel would expect such, but maybe in the future only perfect behaviour will allow one to travel.

baybal2 8y ago
Well, nonpersonhood is nothing new to China. Tenth of millions of people in China can't even get an ID because they don't have birth certificates, and without that you can't legally have a bank account, have a phone number, receive education, receive medical care, travel, own property, have family or even immigrate away from China. And the West has nevertheless kept quiet for long 28 years.
- coldtea 8y ago
  You make it sound like something Chinese government purposefully did, when in fact, those people were simply never registered by their parents -- to avoid the fee for having a child above quota. >The group was never officially registered on the country’s household registration record system, known as hukou, which is closely linked to a person’s legal identity. That means they didn’t officially exist—until recently. On Friday (March 24), China’s Ministry of Public Security, the government department in charge of hukou registrations, announced that they had helped register the 14 million. https://qz.com/941240/china-keeps-finding-millions-of-people-who-never-officially-existed/ https://qz.com/941240/china-keeps-finding-millions-of-people...
  - baybal2 8y ago
    That's not the case, aside from that, having ones papers taken was and is an almost mundane punishment used againts very ordinary people. There are way, way more such non-enpersonned people than just second children, children of single women, or children from marriages of other "non-persons." It is just this time, with the social credit, the state has finally got balls to go after high class bourgeois from megacities, and lower end elites.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  If you want to see non personhood, take a look at how falun gong are treated.
jaclaz 8y ago
>... no hotel would expect such ... Sure, and you and your wife were perfectly free to book a hotel as opposed to an AirBnB (which is NOT a hotel).
iagooar 8y ago
I thought Airbnb charges an extra for the final cleaning?
- gpvos 8y ago
  It depends. I was asked to hoover before leaving too, recently.
- glenneroo 8y ago
  They do, however most of my recent Airbnbs rentals have started requesting (via attached info email and/or the info-book on premises) to wash the dishes, change/take off the bedding sheets and in a couple cases, to wipe specific areas down. It feels like renters are continually pushing the boundaries of what they can ask of guests/tenants.
  - omegabravo 8y ago
    How interesting, I just assumed everyone cleaned up after themselves. I always do the dishes and tidy any mess I may have left. I'll gladly remove the bedding if requested, that only takes a few seconds. Perhaps it's a cultural thing.
    - glenneroo 8y ago
      Considering that Airbnb is generally competing with hotels, which expect nothing of their guests, I tend to approach Airbnb with a similar mentality in regards to cleanliness, granted some of my stays were truly amazing homes where I took extra care to clean up after myself. But I'm far from being a slob and I actually really like doing dishes. It's mostly a matter of principle - why should I pay a cleaning fee and have to clean? This can be particularly frustrating when staying only 1-2 nights where the cleaning fee can be as high as renting for just 1 night.
sjg007 8y ago
You should have also reported the apartment as being awful to AirBnB.

kbad1000 8y ago

Isn't it more like criminals or serious offenders can't fly? Will you allow a person who can possibly hijack the plane?

Majestic121 8y ago
No, not necessarily. As pointed out in another comment : "Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online."
- jaclaz 8y ago
  >No, not necessarily. >As pointed out in another comment : "Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones ... Well, last time someone lighted a cigarette on a plane ... https://nypost.com/2018/05/30/plane-makes-emergency-landing-after-passenger-lit-cigarette/ https://nypost.com/2018/05/30/plane-makes-emergency-landing-...
  - privong 8y ago
    > Well, last time someone lighted a cigarette on a plane ... There are also designated non-smoking zones that are not due to immediate (as opposed to long-term) safety concerns.
    - shaobo 8y ago
      The references linked in the article specifically mentions smoking on trains and planes.
- shaobo 8y ago
  The devil is always in the detail. The "buying too many video games" line came from the gamification aspect of a social network owned by a private enterprise and has nothing to do with the government scheme. And even they have backpedaled from that claim: "Hu Tao, Zhima Credit’s general manager, paints a different picture now. She says the app doesn’t monitor social media posts “nor does it attempt to measure qualitative characteristics like character, honesty, or moral value.” Zhima Credit is not a pilot for the social credit system and doesn’t share data with the government without users’ consent, she says." from https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-soci... And the "posting fake news online" line actually refers to "spreading false information about terrorism" which quite a bit more serious.

kylnew 8y ago

> People are awarded credit points for activities such as undertaking volunteer work and giving blood donations while those who violate traffic laws and charge “under-the-table” fees are punished. > Other infractions reportedly include smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online. This reminds me a lot of that Black Mirror episode where everyone upvotes and downvotes each other in contribution to a social credit system that prevents a girl from traveling and being treated kindly by anyone

Shivetya 8y ago
soon China will go straight to Larry Niven's The Jigsaw Man [1] where sentences for crimes include forced donation of all organs. this includes traffic offenses and the like. On a different tact, the US is just as guilty of this with the over the top of punishment of those convicted of sex crimes where you can be publicly embarrassed by law enforcement after you served your time. Where you can be told where you can live and not live or even go. Considering the power it gives over one group of people it is not hard to see how it will expand to other crimes [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jigsaw_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jigsaw_Man
- nswest23 8y ago
  holy smokes false equivalencies!
KnightOfWords 8y ago
I had a shock when, the day after seeing that episode, I read a news item about China's proposed social credit system.
johnchristopher 8y ago
That black mirror system is p2p when China's system is centralized. I believe the black mirror system is worse.
- PMan74 8y ago

ultim8k 8y ago

Why do people still live there (apart from those who cannot move)?

gtirloni 8y ago
Where should 1.4bn go? Can they severe family ties that easily? Do they speak another language? Do they have the money for it? And more importantly, do they care that much? I think there are a fair big number of reasons why one wouldn't want to leave their homeland.
NedIsakoff 8y ago
Money and lifestyle.
beaconstudios 8y ago
Probably because the regime doesn't actively affect most people's lives much more than a regular government. It's just people who speak out or act out that get oppressed. This is just me assuming, but is guess that China is OK for quiet, well behaved unquestioning citizens.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  The social credit score goes way beyond speaking out. It touches all the minor infractions, speeding tickets, jaywalking, not paying your rent or other debt on time, etc.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    This has only just been implemented though, so we've yet to see the reaction of the populace.
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      Parts of it are already in place. You can listen to this Planet Money episode #871 from last month where they interview a guy that has his mug displayed on a billboard and people hear a warning message when they call his phone, because he couldn't repay a loan. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/26/661163105/episode-871-blacklisted-in-china https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/26/661163105/epis...

bananatron 8y ago

Black Mirror activated

arvinsim 8y ago

Interesting that there seems many posts that shows China in an unfavorable light lately.... In any case, this is one of the things that you thought you only see in fiction. It's chilling to realize that it's real.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

It's interesting that this seems so futuristic and dystopic yet in reading about the specifics it seems oddly reminiscent to social systems many centuries past. In particular it seems to effect similar results to what exile would have had at one time. But exile lost any meaning as the world become more globalized and connected -- where you physically are no longer really means anything. This system would enable the consequences of exile, but with national effect. In a world with a perfectly impartial and objective government, I don't think this is a bad idea at all. The reason it's bad is because governments are made up of people, and people are corrupt. While it may initially be genuinely motivated by helping to improve society, over time it will devolve into a tool for special (and government) interests to incentivize actions that are to their benefit, and punish those against it -- regardless of the objective societal impact of those actions.

walterbell 8y ago
> similar results to what exile would have had at one time Can people on the list leave the country?
- gnode 8y ago
  Yes; China no longer has exit visas. You just might not be able to take the most comfortable form of transport. The travel ban only seems to apply to domestic flights as far as I can tell.

pelagic_sky 8y ago

Last time I had read about this topic the focus was mostly on people who had defaulted on loans. One of the punishments was to have their face/name posted on a billboard publicly shaming them. I wonder if people still didn't pay back the loans, but did public service, if that would improve their score?

b1r6 8y ago

Isn't this bad from an economic perspective? I thought the gov't wanted to encourage spending and increase the velocity of their money. This directly hinders that.

farazzz 8y ago
Indirectly it could increase spending as they are preventing people from leaving and spending their money overseas
- NedIsakoff 8y ago
  It will be used to promote good spending: money spend on Chinese goods and services. De-promote bad spending: foreign goods.

ladw 8y ago

In this system, is it possible to have a negative balance?

jobigoud 8y ago
I don't know the answer but if there is a floor at 0, that would mean at this point you have nothing to loose, so that could backfire. But you probably get incarcerated before you reach some threshold level.
- blbviviv 8y ago
  HN has fault habdlers in place for accounts with karma going too far below zero. It was a hellban at -13 for my old account. I did keep writing for weeks before I noticed, the exercise of which was still rewarding in a way, and I still receive few answers now. Sometimes I suspect mods to the visibillity. I reinterpretted rangeban to mean banned beyond a certain range (as opposed to how it is commonly used: the ban of a whole range of possible identities).
blbviviv 8y ago
That's relative, isn't it? Below average is effectively negative for most purposes. Contrary, the Root Mean Square of a sinusoid AC supply can't go negative, for example. Economy (or socio...) is maybe not that simple, but still based on a balance between giving and receiving. What's interesting then is the average of the slope: zero for AC pretty much by definition. While stability is important, growth is too, economically speaking, so the derivative would need to be normalized under an average, so we are back to square one. That's to say, of course people can be on the decline.

gpvos 8y ago

One of the problems is that this is yet another system that can be corrupted. The rich will be able to buy themselves a high social credit rating, while the poor suffer.

Jyaif 8y ago
And how is this different from any society?
- gpvos 8y ago
  Not very, admittedly. But this system is a huge step in the wrong direction.

miohtama 8y ago

While China has a bad record in human rights, I suggest to apply a lot of source criticism what comes to "social credit system." Especially here in Hacker News comments where discussion is generally more intelligent. Here is more in-depth and fact based article about the topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/amp/?__twitter_impression=true https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
PavlovsCat 8y ago
What facts in the original article does your article correct? Its main point is just that there isn't a single unified ranking, which the OP article doesn't seem to claim.
Kaveren 8y ago
> "and the admitted student who was erroneously denied his place at a university due to his father’s failure to pay back a bank loan." It seems like you can strike "erroneously" from that sentence, since the source it cites doesn't imply it was a mistake at all. Collective punishment is worth criticizing. As per usual, when implementing some Orwellian scheme, there will be a crowd that states there's nothing to worry about, and that people are over-reacting, and that it's really not so bad after all. I wonder what the social credit score of Chinese dissidents will look like. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-affects-childs-university-enrolment-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-affects-...
stefan_ 8y ago
Chinese cities literally use face recognition to publicly shame jaywalkers with their name on big screens: https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2174564/facial-recognition-catches-chinas-air-con-queen-dong-mingzhu https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2174564/facial-... Bad record on human rights doesn't exactly cover it when the full stupidity of that fathoms on you. Jaywalking in itself is a manufactured crime.
8y ago

will_brown 8y ago

Well here in the US we have an actual credit system in place. And since basic necessities are often dependent on credit rating (employment; housing purchaes ; rentals; vehicle financing/lease) it’s pretty dystopian. Not to mention for nearly 20 years now we have had secret no fly lists (no due process to get on or off) and even secret kill lists (no due process), I think it’s just another way to skin the cat, and maybe we should look at our-dystopian-selves in light of outrage at our foreign friends. Edit: I think here just as there the majority will have “good credit” and actually like having an nearly permenant underclass...so just as here, I don’t think there will be much incentive to change there either.

bitexploder 8y ago
I don’t think there is much equivalency here. The credit system is a pain, but it is also very simple to have good credit. Anyone, even someone with little money can have good credit. Even if you have medical debt you can maintain your credit rating. People may not know how to do it, but it isn’t too hard. The privacy aspects of it suck, but it just isn’t that dystopian and it’s usage is relatively narrow in society. Secret no fly lists: impact a very small slice of the population. Try to find more than a few instances of legitimate travelers being blocked, which is something you can do with freedom of speech and freedom of press. I think less than 2000 are us citizens. The program in China is going to disenfranchise entire slices of their population and further limit their social mobility. Secret kill lists are for terrorits. We don’t kill our own citizens. I’m an Enlightenment since everyone deserves due process, but in a defending our national interests sense, that can never be the case and never has been. Our systems aren’t perfect, but every first world nation has some system to track your financial behavior and it impacts you negatively if you don’t make your payments. I just don’t see any strong relationship to the oppression in China and what happens in the US. Our systems aren’t perfect and your criticism has merit, but not as a comparison to China on this topic.
- adrianN 8y ago
  I'm sure you could also argue that it's easy to have a good score in China's system. Just be a good citizen.

mnw21cam 8y ago

It could be argued that the primary purpose of a government is to make things better for people (with deliberately broad/vague words used there). I'm not sure how this qualifies. There's certainly a lot of negative language in that article, and negative language has a habit of not making things better for people.

tonysdg 8y ago
> It could be argued that the primary purpose of a government is to make things better for people As I understand it, this notion only really came into vogue during the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. For much of human history, government served as a way for monarchs, emperors, and the ruling elite to maintain -- and expand -- their hold on power, regardless of what was best for the governed. Indeed, we still see remnants of this in pretty much every government on the planet -- some just are less subtle than others. Arguably, we've spent the last 3 centuries trying to subvert this process and bend it toward, as you put it, making things "better" for all.
gnode 8y ago
> I'm not sure how this qualifies The idea is that social credit discourages behaviour which is bad for people (e.g. traffic violations and small-scale tax evasion) and that makes things better for people. I think it's easy to see how this could be effective, but the criticism is really about fairness (due-process). Proponents would probably argue that the consequences are relatively small compared to traditional criminal justice (going to jail; execution) so it doesn't matter, and the streamlining of justice outweighs the disadvantages.

ElBarto 8y ago

Beyond the obvious issues and extreme aims stated in the article, such a system is also a new, interesting take on the problem of 'crime and punishment' that might be food for thought.

creep 8y ago

This is obviously going to be an unpopular sentiment, but I am somewhat excited to observe the results, and I'm glad this is happening during my time on Earth. Yes, it is a horrible thought, but in many ways inevitable: if the tech exists, it will be used for both good and evil. Better that other societies can see the outcome sooner rather than later.

jobigoud 8y ago
I felt the same. If it was not for the many lives it will ruin it would be a very interesting experiment to watch. And ponder about the myriad of unintended consequences that will arise. Like the reported false positive of the model on a bus advert being repeatedly charged for jaywalking.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
> We will arrive at a moment of sufficent self-alienation where we can contemplate our own destruction [as a species] as in a static spectacle. -- Walter Benjamin So we're repeating the Nazis now, gladly, because that's easier than learning from those who made all that effort, saw and went through so much atrocities and suffering, to to learn from that, and to relay that to us, to impress the importance of it on us? I'm so not onboard with that. > We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. -- Hannah Arendt You (like many) are kinda saying yes, it's unpopular and horrible, but "it would happen anyway". Notice how this is exactly the logic of totalitarianism, an abdication of personal responsibility. Saying "I won't fight it because it will happen anyway" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. > [The method of infallible prediction] is foolproof only after the movements have seized power. Then all debate about the truth or falsity of a totalitarian dictator’s prediction is as weird as arguing with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive – since by killing the person in question the murderer can promptly provide proof of the correctness of his statement. The only valid argument under such conditions is promptly to rescue the person whose death is predicted. Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. The assertion that the Moscow subway is the only one in the world is a lie only so long as the Bolsheviks have not the power to destroy all the others. In other words, the method of infallible prediction, more than any other totalitarian propaganda device, betrays its ultimate goal of world conquest, since only in a world completely under his control could the totalitarian ruler possibly realize all his lies and make true all his prophecies. -- Hannah Arendt, both quotes from "The Origins of Totalitarianism" And by the time you find out there's nothing to be glad about because it's just a spiral of control and fear and anti-intellectualism, with abusers and sadists having free pick of the litter, that won't matter anymore. There will be no allies to defeat the Nazis from the outside this time. There might be no "after". As for societies seeing "outcomes", as you observe "results" (these are people we're talking about here), keep in mind how much of what the Nazis did didn't go to plan. The death camps were supposed to be completely removed from the face of the Earth, just like many villages they razed. If Hitler hadn't started a war, or had limited it, the world still wouldn't know. It's not like we know everything that's going on in China, by a long, long shot. Just like we don't know about the Abu Ghraibs about which we never heard, and so on. To play with fire to learn about fire, let's leave that in the early 20th century, I beg of you. We have books and other documentation.

gexla 8y ago

Wow, the top thing on my mind this morning was that the CIA was able to listen in on a phone call from the Saudi head of state. Now this. I have already been thinking about the possible necessity of a decentralized personas. If an employer wants to see my office persona, then I don't want those people to see my gaming persona. No reason to connect these things to a central identity. Decentralized personas are natural in the entertainment world where you take on different characters. Authors might publish under a different name. Now even a Twitter bot with a crap AI can be a popular persona. As negative as a turn of events as this is, it could be a positive in odd sort of way in which we might view hackers blowing open vulnerabilities. This software, like any can spread like FB - crawling across the globe and no extra cost to the goons running it. I wonder what my score in China might be even though I don't live there. Maybe next, Valenzuela. Now is the time to construct a defense - if even possible.

jld89 8y ago
Valenzuela? Really?
- gexla 8y ago
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/chinese-tech-giant-zte-helps-venezuela-develop-fatherland-card/10503736 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/chinese-tech-giant-zt...
  - ByThyGrace 8y ago
    I think GP was dumbfounded by the mis-spelling of Venezuela than actually asking for more information.

fsloth 8y ago

As a non-chinese 'westerner', to my understanding the important background to this culturally is that Chinese culture has been traditionally much more legalistic than western culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalism_(Chinese_philosophy). It has lots of nuances but the most important difference, if compared to western view of the justice system and the rights of state, is that the most important thing in a legalistic system is to punish those that break the law, and other considerations like individuals right to a fair proceeding and so on, are secondary. I think this social credit system is the perfect manifestation of the legalistic frame of mind. The system is built so that those that step out of the line are punished. Western humanistic philosophy is quite new when compared to how chinese state has been ruled for millenias. I'm not saying this to make any value propositions into one direction or the other - just that there is quite a lot of cultural background here that Europeans and anglosaxons might not be aware of.

skrebbel 8y ago
I think this is a valid observation, and I hadn't made the link yet. Legalism has been used since the very first Chinese emperors to keep the population in check. It's a tool of oppression and arguably no place has a richer history of tools of oppression than China. Xi must be thinking "hey, it worked for millennia, why stop now?"
throwaway548u65 8y ago
Yet in practice, I’ve had the opposite experience. In China, when you break some rule or law, the police are much more lenient and forgiving. First time offenders (of minor crimes) always just get warnings. Even if the law requires a fine or some punishment, most cops will let you go after a stern lecturing. But in the US, once the bureaucracy kicks in, then you have to follow the letter of the law. There is very little compassion. It’s about punishment, not re-education. Perhaps it’s different in Europe, but that’s my experience in China and the US.

Confiks 8y ago

A lot of people in here reference Black Mirror, but it also made me think of ST:VOYs Critical Care [1] (which has plot holes you can just as well drive through). [1] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Care_(episode) http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Critical_Care_(episode)

jmartrican 8y ago

I think the biggest problem with this is that citizens that want to speak out about the government will now be more easily blackballed. So now the government can more easily repress a revolution. I suspect this means that the Communist Party of China will most likely remain in power for a lot longer than their natural shelf-life. When this party makes mistakes and misjudgments, what would happen now? The people will not be able to over-throw or speak out. The people will just have to eat the costs and hope the party does not screw up too much. Basically, the Communist Party has removed one of its last checks to power, internal revolt.

monochromatic 8y ago
Surely this is the main goal of such a system.

ziont 8y ago

Neo-confucianism is now digitized.

cm2187 8y ago

The way I understand this social credit system, it is trying to emulate at a scale of a one billion population the social control you had in a small XVIII century village. Basically what forces you to behave is not so much the law than the fear of contempt from your peers, which could impact every aspect of your life. And I can't help thinking that while it may be efficient at forcing people to not behave like a jerk, it will also have the same effect than for a XVIII century village: a high degree of conformism, that supresses any evolution or innovation. It may be the desired effect by the current rulers, preventing any political challenge. But I think it will also lead to an inexorable decline of the Chinese society.

bicubic 8y ago
>forcing people to not behave like a jerk It doesn't force people to not behave like a jerk, it could just as easily lead to a nation of jerks. It forces people to strictly act within a tiny zone at the center of the Overton window[0]. At scale, it means that natural ideological progress will significantly slow down. Any ideas or actions outside the norm will be culled. It's a move to homogenise the masses and allow the party to more easily set the general direction of 'desired' behaviours. This is pretty clearly the goal first and foremost. Stopping people from being jerks is just the marketing label. The set of measures used to determine social credit will change over the next two decades and will become an ever tighter definition of what the party wants its citizens to be. The current criteria are just the entrée that was determined to be palatable to the masses. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
inawarminister 8y ago
Ah, the cycles of Chinese dynasties, seem to be as eternal as the culture itself.
deleted 8y ago
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mattdanger 8y ago

For those interested in getting a high level of how China's Social Credit System works, NPR's Planet Money did a good show on the topic last month. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/09/655921710/chinas-social-credit-system https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/09/655921710/chin...

lumber-pail 8y ago

Think of the upside if your status followed you everywhere you went, and instead of relying on human decency you could expect treatment in proportion to your behavior. Something like this will inevitably arrive in the West due to human desire for status. Not much different from a thousand little decisions you make every day getting dressed and walking down the street that show the world who you are and what your values are. Now conveniently bundled and accessible to all. Our grandchildren will wonder how we did business online without it.

shadowxs76 8y ago
I consider this to be a potentially terrifying idea. Maybe if "status" were rigorously kept to measurements of honesty and reliability that are as objective and unbiased as possible, I could see it working reasonably well but the much more probable reality would be one of crushing conformity to established social trends and a tendency toward ostracizing people who don't follow along with them, even if those trends (by virtue of being trends) aren't at all reasonably objective measurements of good, bad or moral in a person.

skrebbel 8y ago

I'm disgusted by the comments in this thread that go "culture!", "tradition!", "philosophy!" to explain why this really isn't that much of a problem. So because Chinese rulers have oppressed and mistreated their people for so long that their methods have become ingrained in the national psyche, it's somehow more OK? George Orwell predicted that "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever". He thought he was making a dystopian prediction, a warning of sorts, but he could've just as easily called it a history lesson about China. Sure, many other places, most places in fact, have horrible histories, with evil rulers vastly outnumbering the even somewhat good ones, but China is unique in that it's been all about oppressing and abusing the population as heavily as possible, without pause, ever since the first emperors gave the country its foreign name. A non-stop tradition of oppression doesn't somehow make new oppression less bad. NOTE: Nothing against the Chinese culture or people. I'm extremely fond of lots of Chinese things, not in the least Chinese humor for which I have a particularly soft spot. I love working with Chinese people, I love meeting Chinese people. It makes me sad that such a wonderful place and a wonderful culture can also have such a horrible tradition of oppression.

mavdi 8y ago
Historical context of a country matters a lot when judging the extent of a surveillance problem. Chinese are terrified of chaos and disorder, which has in the past has led to civil wars. For them the first priority is keeping the status quo. Just take a look at the death toll of these wars: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloodiest-conflicts-in-chinese-history-2014-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloodiest-conflicts-in-chine... 25 Million casualties, and that's in the 17th century. Compare that to the absolute carnage of Syria, which has had less than half a million casualties.
- Juliate 8y ago
  That's not a valid excuse for a totalitarian, unfair system. Because these systems have all been torn down by some kind of civil war - there is no other way, because of the nature of power and the structures it uses.
- 8y ago

Kaveren 8y ago

China is approaching a nightmarish dystopian society, if it hasn't reached that already. I'm glad I live in a country where I can spend however much money I feel like on video games without being targeted by an oppressive government. You just have to love a country where you can be murdered by the government for selling marijuana, yet if you abstain from alcohol for religious reasons you are an enemy of the state and must be turned into authorities. Authoritarianism of all forms must be opposed worldwide. Who is to say the West won't be subjugated to such systems a couple decades from now, if we don't stand up for freedoms with vigor?

iliketosleep 8y ago
I'm afraid that by the time people wake up to this, it will already be too late. Authoritarianism backed by high tech is a permanent nightmare come true. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems unstoppable - not enough people seem to really care. It's a weakness of human psychology, we are too caught up in the short-term, but in this case the long-term consequences will be terminal.

codedokode 8y ago

They say that the system helps to punish for violating traffic laws or evading taxes. But why police and courts cannot deal with this? Maybe because the real purpose is something else? Also, in some countries there are similar systems, where your rights might be restricted without court's judgement or right for appeal. For example, in Russia, if you are suspected to be an extremist, you won't be able to withdraw money from your bank account. In other countries there are no-fly lists or potential terrorists lists which restrict people's rights without being able to defend themselves.

wozmirek 8y ago

While I'm terrified by the system, I do remember watching a BBC (I think?) report on this. There was a young Chinese woman there, who felt safer. This made me think - what would women - and women, not the young men (me being one) choose when given a choice of the social credit system or being able to walk around the city safe(r)? Quite general question, yet I do believe they would choose the latter; and I wouldn't blame them.

paganel 8y ago
"Feeling safer" has almost nothing to do with the Government watching you and it's almost entirely caused by the local social norms. Case in point and to partly answer your question: I have a woman colleague who has recently moved to London from Bucharest. She told me that while living in Bucharest she had no issue at all going back home alone at 2 or 3 in the morning, while in London she avoids going out all by herself after 8 PM, because she does not feel safe. Doesn't matter that London is one of the most camera-surveilled cities in the "Western" world while Bucharest has almost no cameras, all it matters is that there are more people in London ready to physically and verbally harass a person walking on the street all by her/himself compared to a city like Bucharest. I have no idea on how one would change those social norms, I'm just saying that adding cameras hasn't solved the issue and will probably not solve it.
- wozmirek 8y ago
  Oh, I agree with you m8. I'm terrified with the surveillance stuff. I'd exchange then my "safe(r)" with "more sense of "safety"" (double quote deliberate). Side note, that colleague originates from Bucharest? Just wondering if it's the same with my wife who feels unsafe in Berlin while she feels safer in Krakow.
  - paganel 8y ago
    > Side note, that colleague originates from Bucharest? Yeap, she has lived her entire life until this summer in Bucharest (she's approaching 30 now), and she hasn't grow up and live in the "posh" parts of town, so to speak. > Just wondering if it's the same with my wife who feels unsafe in Berlin while she feels safer in Krakow. It's funny because said colleague (and friend) has moved out to London for a Polish guy, I guess that's where the better-paid jobs are.

virmundi 8y ago

Think about how great this will be in the US. Finally, we can tag people who think incorrectly. They can be given low scores. All those people in fly overstates can just remain there. Hopefully the thought of a 72 hour car ride to a civilized city will give them pause when promoting fake news like Bernie's plan for universal healthcare is bad. It will be a wonderful day for the country when we can correct their wrong-thoughts.

edejong 8y ago

China: judge, jury, executioner?

ancorevard 8y ago

Just imagine if the National Socialist party in Germany would have had this in the 1930-40s. They could have been even more “efficient” in taking out the various groups of people they found to be of “low social value”. For everyone but those who believe in powerful centralized governments this is a nightmare scenario.

dnomad 8y ago

Hilarious. I wasn't even done with the comment and it's already being rapidly downvoted. The total lack of intellectual integrity on HN is a sight to behold. It's really funny to watch the advocates of free speech and discussion rapidly downvote anything that contradicts their ideology.

deleted 8y ago
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notyourwork 8y ago
I down voted not because I disagree but because your comment is a rant and doesn't offer any justification to your perspective. Hand waving and saying go talk to people doesn't prove your point, it makes you sound silly.
- dnomad 8y ago
  Sure. In a thread absolutely full of baseless rants my comment, which does provide an explanation and a link, was the one that jumped out you. Though it is aways interesting to see people like you can rationalize your censorious actions. It's too bad HN doesn't require a text explanation for downvoting. It wouldn't decrease the hypocrisy but it would provide some further insight into the hypocrisy.
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    I also took the time to read the linked article and it isn't substantiating your claim. A few thousand people from an oppressive nation were surveyed about their support (or lack thereof) for a nation sponsored system. Why would anyone be surprised by the outcome of that study. Furthermore, polls suggested Hillary Clinton was going to win the last election for US and who is the 45th president?
Juliate 8y ago
Praise for a totalitarian system is not acceptable, neither debatable. That's all. End of story. We kind of learned about that in Europe, the hard way, several times in XXth century (Italy, Germany, Russia, Soviet era invaded countries, Spain); some of us still having forgotten sadly. A social credit system that is used to expedite what is normally the responsibility of law, debate, judgement - and can then be used to impose arbitrarial rules from the state (don't be fooled about that) _is_ totalitarian per nature. It is even more that because it relies on automation. Don't use exceptionalism or pride to defend or justify such a system.

tivert 8y ago

They've already had parts of this in place for awhile. My aunt-in-law's friend has had difficulty traveling in China because she's mistakenly listed in the system as being some kind of Falun Gong leader through some kind of clerical error. She found out when she was on a bus going on vacation, and they pulled her off the bus once they scanned her national ID. She has no appeal and no way to correct the mistake. None of the police or officials she's talked to have done anything. She's just stuck with it.

methodover 8y ago

This may sound like a stupid question, but did the Chinese people vote for this? Was there a democratic process?

tivert 8y ago
> This may sound like a stupid question, but did the Chinese people vote for this? Was there a democratic process? Of course not. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...

noarchy 8y ago

Is the 50 cent party working overtime in these threads? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

rick22 8y ago

Its sad technology is being used for evil. What are the suggestions to a programmer who fears his native country might adopt such systems. Are there any open source projects focused on combating such systems ?

pgt 8y ago

What can I do as an engineer to alleviate this problem?

kaonashi 8y ago

I think I’d rather live under something like this than the opaque, private fico system.

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