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Beijing to Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020

66 points by lunchbreak 8y ago

preommr 8y ago
A part of me feels like this can't possibly be a good thing. But who knows, maybe this will work out and be a net positive for society at the cost of the few people that will fall through the cracks and be evaluated unfairly. It seems like this is going to happen one way or another, so here's hoping for the best.
- zepto 8y ago
  Who knows? I think it’s pretty obviously a dystopian nightmare.
- xbmcuser 8y ago
  Like all things this will have it's negatives and it positives. Will result in decrease in crime cleaner streets better behaved citizens. One major problem China faces is that they have advanced too quickly from rural to urban for the people habits and behaviours to have changed. Now this will force people to change. But at the same time the restrictions that people will be living under will result in mental problems in the future. My thought is taking this at face value and not considering how this will be abused as that is another argument which everyone else is doing.
pmoriarty 8y ago
Every resident, or just those who don't bribe the right people to improve their ranking, or those who aren't high enough in the political pecking order? It almost goes without saying that such a system is ripe for abuse and puts in to the hands of the powerful a new tool for control over the powerless. The average citizen will now have to jump even higher when their masters tell them to jump, while those at the top of the political hierarchy are very likely to be exempt.
- chongli 8y ago
  such a system is ripe for abuse I hope I'm not being too cynical by saying: the things we fear most about this system are not abuse, they're the system working as intended. Xi is a dictator and he is riding to and fro on a tiger from which he dare not dismount. Mass surveillance and a strong police state are the tools he uses to stay in the saddle.
  - natch 8y ago
    >...the system working as intended. You raise a good point, but I’d still be wary of both possibilities. Or some hybrid mix where it’s the worst of both worlds simultaneously.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Even if the system applies equally to everyone, the biggest problem will be that civil disobedience is now completely banned. The government is now able to do whatever they want with impunity, and the citizens can't do anything about it.
  - fossuser 8y ago
    Maybe they’ll be a new subculture of unrated or poorly rated people that supply their own market and services? That’s if the government doesn’t just start killing them.
    - pmoriarty 8y ago
      This reminds me of Blank Reg[1], from 1984's Max Headroom.[2] The Blanks were people who have no record in the system. Now that was a prescient TV show if I ever saw one. [1] - http://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_%22Blanks%22 http://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_the_Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_...
    - rapnie 8y ago
pg_bot 8y ago
Society will no longer be able to function if you can't break rules. I can easily see the people who are impacted by this system starting a revolution.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  The entire point of the system is to make revolution, or any change at all, impossible. The people no longer have anything to bring in on their side of the negotiation.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    Also there will be no way to organise one because the government will drop your social score for even thinking about it of talking to anyone else with a low score.
armitron 8y ago
To me this looks like the continuation of Project Cybersyn [1] and is just applied cybernetics on a societal scale. To call it totalitarian or dismiss it as a simple dystopian nightmare is very superficial. I am actually quite impressed at the guile of the Chinese state for going ahead with this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn To the unknown person who criticized me ("people like you are what's wrong with the world") but later deleted his post: To see this from a mere political angle, is to miss the point entirely. You are deluding yourself if you think that similar cybernetic feedback loops are not currently in play in western democratic states. The difference is that in the west, these loops are driven by non-state actors and focus on cultivating consumerism (look at the Black Friday hordes), apathy and lack of critical thinking. By taking an active approach, the Chinese state could try to pre-empt these problems on one hand and aim at creating a different kind of citizen on the other.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
djklanac 8y ago
1984
yosito 8y ago
I've been frustrated lately that my rating as a passenger in Uber is at 4.78 and falling despite my own preception of always being an excellent passenger. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have your entire life controlled by this type of rating system. I listened to a podcast that dug into how once you get into a hole with this type of rating system it's self-reinforcing and practically impossible to get out of. This can't be a good thing for civil liberties.
- paraditedc 8y ago
  Unlike Uber (or even HN for that matter), China's social credit system is transparent and explicit in the way it rewards or deducts points. You know what you did wrongly to lose points, so that you can avoid it next time. You also know what are good things that you can do to improve your score.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    Which is perfect for the government because everyone will change their behaviours to match what the government wants.
    - paraditedc 8y ago
      Totally agree.
    - throwaway34924 8y ago
      But the government is made up of people. If I recall, there are something like 90 million members in the CCP. And really, any Chinese citizen can join and move up the ranks.
      - mtgx 8y ago
        So we're pretending Xi is not a dictator now? Did we forget how he arrested all of his real opponents and critics before re-election? You make it sound like China is almost a democracy which couldn't be farther from the truth.
nobody271 8y ago
In the future identities will belong to groups of people, not individuals. It will be like that episode of cracked where everyone is one of the characters on friends. Something weird is happening with society where as the internet connects us there are ways of doing things that win out on huge scales. It's like we're outsourcing our personalities, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. Powers that be want more control. They don't want us to be individuals. They want us to be neurons. We're taking a sick turn that's a hundred times worse than anything Orwell could have imagined.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Can you expound on this? I’m not sure I follow but I’m interested.
  - nobody271 8y ago
    Okay but please understand you're asking me to spend a half an hour decompressing and interleaving several different ideas I have into one. I don't mind if you really are interested but this is the internet and it wouldn't be the first time I did to his only to no response or to have it start an argument that I don't want to participate in.
    - rak00n 8y ago
      Another way to see it is we're interested in what you were saying and we're giving you the podium.
      - nobody271 8y ago
        As information about people will be easier to access (think Google Glass) it will be natural to start grouping strangers together based on various scores. So when you see someone in the store their profile gets pulled up and you see an assessment about them. At that point the individual goes away and their AIDs (Aggregate Identities) become more important because it's just easier. From there instead of trying to grow as an individual people will try to grow in these identities or try and get the right scores to switch identities. If we enter into an age of abundance there will have to be a means of dividing up resources. Since there will be fewer jobs for many people (I ask you to assume this in a broad context but we could unpack it further to see if it has legs) they will fall back on their AIDs to determine what their share of resources should be. There won't be a reward for doing your own thing because doing your own thing won't be recognized in any of these identities. At that point you're just reading from whichever script you believe will get you the most points and you cease to become a human being, you become a neuron. Let's start with news aggregators to talk about ideas winning out on a massive scale. One thing news aggregators do is act as a sort of activation function for ideas. For a given news aggregator an unpopular idea within the group will get tamped down while a popular idea within the group will get magnified. For example, an article about how Rust is awesome will get more points on Hacker News than an article about how Rust isn't any better than C. So when we use news aggregators we learn how to be heard and what to avoid. It's almost so bad that you can see an inaccurate version of history being written before your eyes sometimes. For example, during the last presidential election Reddit was awash with extremist left wing propaganda because those ideas were rewarded and magnified on that site. Meanwhile any centrist or right idea was immediately tamped down. The aggregator has spoken! Again, we see what to avoid and what to do to get a reward. So we trade our autonomy for internet points. I guess that is why they call it the hive mind. To me it seems like our ideas are becoming more unified even as our population expands. I think this is because ideas spread easily on social media. But at the same time it's just easier to do things at scale. It's easier to build cookie cutter houses than homes for individuals and honestly it's easier to live in a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter life and give up some of that autonomy so that you can focus on what matters to you. e.g. so you can specialize or just provide the best possible life for your family. But even in specialties there is a strong demand to conform to popular consensus. That's why, to me, it seems like we are outsourcing many parts of ourselves. We give up a little autonomy here so that we can focus our energy elsewhere but when we're expected to give up our autonomy there too we again become nothing more than extremely hard working, unappreciated, and unfulfilled neurons. *At this point it might sound like I am talking about myself or that I hate my job, lol. Just to clarify, I actually do enjoy my job but I know what it's like to work in a web development dungeon. The last little bit about Orwell I don't think makes a whole lot of sense now that I look at it again. He surely could have imagined a dystopian future where a power hungry government turns its citizens into slaves by controlling their access to resources based on invasive monitoring of their "behavior". It just seems a little deeper than 1984 to me because of the psychological impact of living a prescribed life and carrying around a fake smile every second of the day.
thrower123 8y ago
I can't help but think of the episode Majority Rule from The Orville, but more sinister and less campy... https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/
NoblePublius 8y ago
It you think this is dystopian, you probably have good credit. Try setting up home internet with a FICO under 600. Try renting an apartment in Williamsburg with an Experian score under 750. Try getting a civil service job while your gas bill is overdue. America invented this.
- tomrod 8y ago
  What happens in these cases?
  - 3327 8y ago
    you are not in the system. So you do not partake. no lease, no credit card, no nothing. America gave it to the corporations. So what difference does it make if an all mighty corp does it or the gov't?
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      This is completely false. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think the tens of millions of people with bad credit are all unemployed and homeless? How exactly did they even get that bad credit in the first place?
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Give me a break. I rent to tenants with horrible credit all the time. And unless you’re handling handling money or sensitive info or getting a security clearance, bad credit won’t stop you from getting a job. You people need to stop reading the internet echo chamber and go talk to some actual people in the world. Tens of millions of people have bad credit. You think they’re all homeless and unemployed?
- berberous 8y ago
  Some of these seem like really bad comparisons. If your credit score is bad, you just have to pay your ISP in advance, rather than be billed monthly in arrears, which is pretty logical. This is also just a rational response by a private company in response to a customer’s bad credit. Not that I don’t have lots of issues with the credit reporting agencies in America. The Chinese system seems a whole lot more dystopian since it’s state run, and since they are trying to link unrelated things — i.e. penalize you for certain “anti-social” behavior that goes far beyond having poor credit.
resters 8y ago
The main difference between this and the US is that US citizens are compliant enough not to warrant such explicit measures. In the US, if a citizen is suspected of getting out of line, all social media data, phone metadata, all bank transactions, etc., for that individual and all of his/her friends or acquaintances, which for most people is tens of thousands of people, is available for review by law enforcement, with no doubt that a warrant will be obtained. FWIW, in the US, anyone within 100 miles of a border (which is the majority of people) has no 4th amendment right against arbitrary search. There is most definitely a social credit system in the US to the extent that one is necessary, but due to the success of other social control mechanisms it is not necessary for it to be as overt as China's. This sort of anti-China propaganda has been building over time and this story has been tested and revised a few times, but per the article below, is not actually true: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/19/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/19/c...
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  As usual, here come the comments claiming that the US is just as bad. Had HN been around at the end of WWII, I’m sure the news of millions of Jews being killed in concentration camps would have been met with “Yeah, well we put Japanese people in internment camps. We do it differently, but we still oppress people, so who are we to judge.” You’re wrong about there being no doubt that a warrant can be obtained to examine the records of tens of thousands of people because one person “got out of line”, except in the most extreme cases. Well, depending on how you define “getting out of line”, maybe extreme national security but that’s relatively rare. I’d like to see a source showing that such warrants are widespread. And that’s not how the 100 miles from the border / 4th amendment thing works either. Not that it’s not a complete clusterfuck, but it’s not as simple as you describe: https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone Edit: to clarify for the dead comment in response to mine: America does all kinds of terrible shit. We always have. Internment camps are a stain on this country. And the stuff we do in the name of national security spits on the spirit of the constitution. But that doesn’t mean it’s on the same level as all atrocities by other governments, or that we’re robbed of our moral authority to condemn human rights violations because we’re imperfect. And the lazy whataboutism that’s dragged out every time there’s a story about a truly horrific authoritarian regime trampling on its citizens is galling. It’s ignorant and useless.
edoo 8y ago
It is worth noting that many of the penalties the Chinese government is pushing would be considered a direct violation of inalienable humans rights as recognized by our constitution. Their approach should have you terrified for their citizens.
- tomcam 8y ago
  The concept of individual rights is fairly alien in Chinese culture. Group norms and stability are valued far more.
  - throwaway34924 8y ago
    The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Ha! I’m terrified for our citizens, because people here apparently have no idea how good we have it, even with all our problems. According to a bunch of people on HN (on this post and previous ones about this subject), the fact that we have FICO scores in America makes us just as bad, if not worse. People have literally no idea how good they have it. If they think everything is hell, why would they fight to protect it?
  - inetknght 8y ago
    > the fact that we have FICO scores in America makes us just as bad, if not worse. No, it makes us comparable. Not comparable like "we're the same". It makes us comparable like "we have something similar and let me show you some of the differences and correlations so that we might learn something". > People have literally no idea how good they have it. I think you're observing us focused on the bad and it makes you think we've lost sight of what's good. > If they think everything is hell, why would they fight to protect it? What right do we have to something which we do not wish to improve? How can we fight to improve if we do not discuss how it's bad and what could be done to resolve the problems? How can you resolve problems if you don't recognize them in the first place?
ridgeguy 8y ago
Have not read beyond the headline, so apologies if (as is likely) I missed a critical point. However: This seems likely to cause those who don't want or can't fit into the rated society China is building to emigrate. The more creative, the misfits, those square pegs who don't fit in round holes... Send them our way.
- stephen_g 8y ago
  I’m fairly sure that low social credit restricts their ability to travel or leave the country, so that may not work. Unfortunately the more likely scenario for then is probably winding up in ‘re-education’.
AlexandrB 8y ago
Make no mistake, this is coming to "the west" as well. Just in a distributed, capitalistic way. Someone else here mentioned Uber ratings, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Social media is already used as a source of data for rentals[1] and even babysitting[2] applications. But of course the most eager adopters are also the effective gatekeeper to so many aspects of modern life: insurance companies[3]. Meanwhile, the algorithms used to make these decisions are often an unaccountable, un-analyzable black box. It's going to be very possible to fall through into an "undesirable" category without any obvious misdeeds or obvious ways to fix the situation. I expect we're going to see a category of consultants emerge that will help you "fix" undesirable algorithm ratings - just like we have for credit ratings. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-screen-tenants-automagically/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-scr... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app-predictim-uses-ai-to-sniff-out-bullies/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app-... [3] https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intelligence-and-profiling-in-the-insurance-industry-4958fd11f86f https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intell...
- exolymph 8y ago
  > Just in a distributed, capitalistic way. This is a HUGE difference because you are allowed to exit a given system / rating scheme or not use the services that require it. That may be difficult, but it's not literally prevented by the government. You and your fellow defectors can build alternatives. Build your own institutions.
  - username90 8y ago
    I bet your future employer would be very interested in seeing your Uber rating before they hire you, so if a company decided to sell that information it could get very close to what China intends to do.
SN76477 8y ago
This isn’t mature technology. It shouldn’t be opterating at this scale. Following novelty can lead to many disasters. I imagine that suicide and such self destructive behavior will skyrocket.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Curious if there are small scale experiments. Like, what if reddit karma were distributed by the mods?
james_damore 8y ago
China's social credit score is monstrous. Imagine living in a country where one tiny slip up in etiquette or ideology could cost you your entire career. That would really suck.
kstenerud 8y ago
Once this phase is complete, the true manacles will come out: targeted collective punishment. If your family member or friend is a bad actor, you are guilty by association, and your score suffers. This will also make you reachable even if you're not living in China. Say something China doesn't like? Your family and friends score suffers in China. Do it for too long and they disown you for their own self preservation.
fuscy 8y ago
China doesn’t have a good track record of policies: the pest control, the one child. One could also argue that their economy is also showing a crisis in the future. This system if it is unstable and has side effects will probably screw up two generations at least. The main issue I see is that people with low scores can “infect” other people’s scores. Considering this like a viral phenomenon the score will be impacted starting with family, friends, colleagues, strangers. I can’t see a solution except going the old route of “killing the nine family relations”. I can see some kind of ghetto of low social score people doing barter and what not. There are some contradictions like donating blood giving good score but what if for someone with a low score. There goes empathy if punished. Or some exploits like colluding and creating cartels of increasing social score artificially.

66 points by lunchbreak 8y ago

A part of me feels like this can't possibly be a good thing. But who knows, maybe this will work out and be a net positive for society at the cost of the few people that will fall through the cracks and be evaluated unfairly. It seems like this is going to happen one way or another, so here's hoping for the best.

zepto 8y ago
Who knows? I think it’s pretty obviously a dystopian nightmare.
xbmcuser 8y ago
Like all things this will have it's negatives and it positives. Will result in decrease in crime cleaner streets better behaved citizens. One major problem China faces is that they have advanced too quickly from rural to urban for the people habits and behaviours to have changed. Now this will force people to change. But at the same time the restrictions that people will be living under will result in mental problems in the future. My thought is taking this at face value and not considering how this will be abused as that is another argument which everyone else is doing.

pmoriarty 8y ago

Every resident, or just those who don't bribe the right people to improve their ranking, or those who aren't high enough in the political pecking order? It almost goes without saying that such a system is ripe for abuse and puts in to the hands of the powerful a new tool for control over the powerless. The average citizen will now have to jump even higher when their masters tell them to jump, while those at the top of the political hierarchy are very likely to be exempt.

chongli 8y ago
such a system is ripe for abuse I hope I'm not being too cynical by saying: the things we fear most about this system are not abuse, they're the system working as intended. Xi is a dictator and he is riding to and fro on a tiger from which he dare not dismount. Mass surveillance and a strong police state are the tools he uses to stay in the saddle.
- natch 8y ago
  >...the system working as intended. You raise a good point, but I’d still be wary of both possibilities. Or some hybrid mix where it’s the worst of both worlds simultaneously.
whatshisface 8y ago
Even if the system applies equally to everyone, the biggest problem will be that civil disobedience is now completely banned. The government is now able to do whatever they want with impunity, and the citizens can't do anything about it.
- fossuser 8y ago
  Maybe they’ll be a new subculture of unrated or poorly rated people that supply their own market and services? That’s if the government doesn’t just start killing them.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    This reminds me of Blank Reg[1], from 1984's Max Headroom.[2] The Blanks were people who have no record in the system. Now that was a prescient TV show if I ever saw one. [1] - http://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_%22Blanks%22 http://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.1.6:_... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_the_Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom:_20_Minutes_into_...
  - rapnie 8y ago

pg_bot 8y ago

Society will no longer be able to function if you can't break rules. I can easily see the people who are impacted by this system starting a revolution.

whatshisface 8y ago
The entire point of the system is to make revolution, or any change at all, impossible. The people no longer have anything to bring in on their side of the negotiation.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Also there will be no way to organise one because the government will drop your social score for even thinking about it of talking to anyone else with a low score.

armitron 8y ago

To me this looks like the continuation of Project Cybersyn [1] and is just applied cybernetics on a societal scale. To call it totalitarian or dismiss it as a simple dystopian nightmare is very superficial. I am actually quite impressed at the guile of the Chinese state for going ahead with this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn To the unknown person who criticized me ("people like you are what's wrong with the world") but later deleted his post: To see this from a mere political angle, is to miss the point entirely. You are deluding yourself if you think that similar cybernetic feedback loops are not currently in play in western democratic states. The difference is that in the west, these loops are driven by non-state actors and focus on cultivating consumerism (look at the Black Friday hordes), apathy and lack of critical thinking. By taking an active approach, the Chinese state could try to pre-empt these problems on one hand and aim at creating a different kind of citizen on the other.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

djklanac 8y ago

1984

yosito 8y ago

I've been frustrated lately that my rating as a passenger in Uber is at 4.78 and falling despite my own preception of always being an excellent passenger. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have your entire life controlled by this type of rating system. I listened to a podcast that dug into how once you get into a hole with this type of rating system it's self-reinforcing and practically impossible to get out of. This can't be a good thing for civil liberties.

paraditedc 8y ago
Unlike Uber (or even HN for that matter), China's social credit system is transparent and explicit in the way it rewards or deducts points. You know what you did wrongly to lose points, so that you can avoid it next time. You also know what are good things that you can do to improve your score.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Which is perfect for the government because everyone will change their behaviours to match what the government wants.
  - paraditedc 8y ago
    Totally agree.
  - throwaway34924 8y ago
    But the government is made up of people. If I recall, there are something like 90 million members in the CCP. And really, any Chinese citizen can join and move up the ranks.
    - mtgx 8y ago
      So we're pretending Xi is not a dictator now? Did we forget how he arrested all of his real opponents and critics before re-election? You make it sound like China is almost a democracy which couldn't be farther from the truth.

nobody271 8y ago

In the future identities will belong to groups of people, not individuals. It will be like that episode of cracked where everyone is one of the characters on friends. Something weird is happening with society where as the internet connects us there are ways of doing things that win out on huge scales. It's like we're outsourcing our personalities, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. Powers that be want more control. They don't want us to be individuals. They want us to be neurons. We're taking a sick turn that's a hundred times worse than anything Orwell could have imagined.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Can you expound on this? I’m not sure I follow but I’m interested.
- nobody271 8y ago
  Okay but please understand you're asking me to spend a half an hour decompressing and interleaving several different ideas I have into one. I don't mind if you really are interested but this is the internet and it wouldn't be the first time I did to his only to no response or to have it start an argument that I don't want to participate in.
  - rak00n 8y ago
    Another way to see it is we're interested in what you were saying and we're giving you the podium.
    - nobody271 8y ago
      As information about people will be easier to access (think Google Glass) it will be natural to start grouping strangers together based on various scores. So when you see someone in the store their profile gets pulled up and you see an assessment about them. At that point the individual goes away and their AIDs (Aggregate Identities) become more important because it's just easier. From there instead of trying to grow as an individual people will try to grow in these identities or try and get the right scores to switch identities. If we enter into an age of abundance there will have to be a means of dividing up resources. Since there will be fewer jobs for many people (I ask you to assume this in a broad context but we could unpack it further to see if it has legs) they will fall back on their AIDs to determine what their share of resources should be. There won't be a reward for doing your own thing because doing your own thing won't be recognized in any of these identities. At that point you're just reading from whichever script you believe will get you the most points and you cease to become a human being, you become a neuron. Let's start with news aggregators to talk about ideas winning out on a massive scale. One thing news aggregators do is act as a sort of activation function for ideas. For a given news aggregator an unpopular idea within the group will get tamped down while a popular idea within the group will get magnified. For example, an article about how Rust is awesome will get more points on Hacker News than an article about how Rust isn't any better than C. So when we use news aggregators we learn how to be heard and what to avoid. It's almost so bad that you can see an inaccurate version of history being written before your eyes sometimes. For example, during the last presidential election Reddit was awash with extremist left wing propaganda because those ideas were rewarded and magnified on that site. Meanwhile any centrist or right idea was immediately tamped down. The aggregator has spoken! Again, we see what to avoid and what to do to get a reward. So we trade our autonomy for internet points. I guess that is why they call it the hive mind. To me it seems like our ideas are becoming more unified even as our population expands. I think this is because ideas spread easily on social media. But at the same time it's just easier to do things at scale. It's easier to build cookie cutter houses than homes for individuals and honestly it's easier to live in a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter life and give up some of that autonomy so that you can focus on what matters to you. e.g. so you can specialize or just provide the best possible life for your family. But even in specialties there is a strong demand to conform to popular consensus. That's why, to me, it seems like we are outsourcing many parts of ourselves. We give up a little autonomy here so that we can focus our energy elsewhere but when we're expected to give up our autonomy there too we again become nothing more than extremely hard working, unappreciated, and unfulfilled neurons. *At this point it might sound like I am talking about myself or that I hate my job, lol. Just to clarify, I actually do enjoy my job but I know what it's like to work in a web development dungeon. The last little bit about Orwell I don't think makes a whole lot of sense now that I look at it again. He surely could have imagined a dystopian future where a power hungry government turns its citizens into slaves by controlling their access to resources based on invasive monitoring of their "behavior". It just seems a little deeper than 1984 to me because of the psychological impact of living a prescribed life and carrying around a fake smile every second of the day.

thrower123 8y ago

I can't help but think of the episode Majority Rule from The Orville, but more sinister and less campy... https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/

NoblePublius 8y ago

It you think this is dystopian, you probably have good credit. Try setting up home internet with a FICO under 600. Try renting an apartment in Williamsburg with an Experian score under 750. Try getting a civil service job while your gas bill is overdue. America invented this.

tomrod 8y ago
What happens in these cases?
- 3327 8y ago
  you are not in the system. So you do not partake. no lease, no credit card, no nothing. America gave it to the corporations. So what difference does it make if an all mighty corp does it or the gov't?
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    This is completely false. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think the tens of millions of people with bad credit are all unemployed and homeless? How exactly did they even get that bad credit in the first place?
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Give me a break. I rent to tenants with horrible credit all the time. And unless you’re handling handling money or sensitive info or getting a security clearance, bad credit won’t stop you from getting a job. You people need to stop reading the internet echo chamber and go talk to some actual people in the world. Tens of millions of people have bad credit. You think they’re all homeless and unemployed?
berberous 8y ago
Some of these seem like really bad comparisons. If your credit score is bad, you just have to pay your ISP in advance, rather than be billed monthly in arrears, which is pretty logical. This is also just a rational response by a private company in response to a customer’s bad credit. Not that I don’t have lots of issues with the credit reporting agencies in America. The Chinese system seems a whole lot more dystopian since it’s state run, and since they are trying to link unrelated things — i.e. penalize you for certain “anti-social” behavior that goes far beyond having poor credit.

resters 8y ago

The main difference between this and the US is that US citizens are compliant enough not to warrant such explicit measures. In the US, if a citizen is suspected of getting out of line, all social media data, phone metadata, all bank transactions, etc., for that individual and all of his/her friends or acquaintances, which for most people is tens of thousands of people, is available for review by law enforcement, with no doubt that a warrant will be obtained. FWIW, in the US, anyone within 100 miles of a border (which is the majority of people) has no 4th amendment right against arbitrary search. There is most definitely a social credit system in the US to the extent that one is necessary, but due to the success of other social control mechanisms it is not necessary for it to be as overt as China's. This sort of anti-China propaganda has been building over time and this story has been tested and revised a few times, but per the article below, is not actually true: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/19/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/19/c...

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
As usual, here come the comments claiming that the US is just as bad. Had HN been around at the end of WWII, I’m sure the news of millions of Jews being killed in concentration camps would have been met with “Yeah, well we put Japanese people in internment camps. We do it differently, but we still oppress people, so who are we to judge.” You’re wrong about there being no doubt that a warrant can be obtained to examine the records of tens of thousands of people because one person “got out of line”, except in the most extreme cases. Well, depending on how you define “getting out of line”, maybe extreme national security but that’s relatively rare. I’d like to see a source showing that such warrants are widespread. And that’s not how the 100 miles from the border / 4th amendment thing works either. Not that it’s not a complete clusterfuck, but it’s not as simple as you describe: https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone Edit: to clarify for the dead comment in response to mine: America does all kinds of terrible shit. We always have. Internment camps are a stain on this country. And the stuff we do in the name of national security spits on the spirit of the constitution. But that doesn’t mean it’s on the same level as all atrocities by other governments, or that we’re robbed of our moral authority to condemn human rights violations because we’re imperfect. And the lazy whataboutism that’s dragged out every time there’s a story about a truly horrific authoritarian regime trampling on its citizens is galling. It’s ignorant and useless.

edoo 8y ago

It is worth noting that many of the penalties the Chinese government is pushing would be considered a direct violation of inalienable humans rights as recognized by our constitution. Their approach should have you terrified for their citizens.

tomcam 8y ago
The concept of individual rights is fairly alien in Chinese culture. Group norms and stability are valued far more.
- throwaway34924 8y ago
  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Ha! I’m terrified for our citizens, because people here apparently have no idea how good we have it, even with all our problems. According to a bunch of people on HN (on this post and previous ones about this subject), the fact that we have FICO scores in America makes us just as bad, if not worse. People have literally no idea how good they have it. If they think everything is hell, why would they fight to protect it?
- inetknght 8y ago
  > the fact that we have FICO scores in America makes us just as bad, if not worse. No, it makes us comparable. Not comparable like "we're the same". It makes us comparable like "we have something similar and let me show you some of the differences and correlations so that we might learn something". > People have literally no idea how good they have it. I think you're observing us focused on the bad and it makes you think we've lost sight of what's good. > If they think everything is hell, why would they fight to protect it? What right do we have to something which we do not wish to improve? How can we fight to improve if we do not discuss how it's bad and what could be done to resolve the problems? How can you resolve problems if you don't recognize them in the first place?

ridgeguy 8y ago

Have not read beyond the headline, so apologies if (as is likely) I missed a critical point. However: This seems likely to cause those who don't want or can't fit into the rated society China is building to emigrate. The more creative, the misfits, those square pegs who don't fit in round holes... Send them our way.

stephen_g 8y ago
I’m fairly sure that low social credit restricts their ability to travel or leave the country, so that may not work. Unfortunately the more likely scenario for then is probably winding up in ‘re-education’.

AlexandrB 8y ago

Make no mistake, this is coming to "the west" as well. Just in a distributed, capitalistic way. Someone else here mentioned Uber ratings, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Social media is already used as a source of data for rentals[1] and even babysitting[2] applications. But of course the most eager adopters are also the effective gatekeeper to so many aspects of modern life: insurance companies[3]. Meanwhile, the algorithms used to make these decisions are often an unaccountable, un-analyzable black box. It's going to be very possible to fall through into an "undesirable" category without any obvious misdeeds or obvious ways to fix the situation. I expect we're going to see a category of consultants emerge that will help you "fix" undesirable algorithm ratings - just like we have for credit ratings. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-screen-tenants-automagically/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-scr... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app-predictim-uses-ai-to-sniff-out-bullies/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app-... [3] https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intelligence-and-profiling-in-the-insurance-industry-4958fd11f86f https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intell...

exolymph 8y ago
> Just in a distributed, capitalistic way. This is a HUGE difference because you are allowed to exit a given system / rating scheme or not use the services that require it. That may be difficult, but it's not literally prevented by the government. You and your fellow defectors can build alternatives. Build your own institutions.
- username90 8y ago
  I bet your future employer would be very interested in seeing your Uber rating before they hire you, so if a company decided to sell that information it could get very close to what China intends to do.

SN76477 8y ago

This isn’t mature technology. It shouldn’t be opterating at this scale. Following novelty can lead to many disasters. I imagine that suicide and such self destructive behavior will skyrocket.

chillacy 8y ago
Curious if there are small scale experiments. Like, what if reddit karma were distributed by the mods?

james_damore 8y ago

China's social credit score is monstrous. Imagine living in a country where one tiny slip up in etiquette or ideology could cost you your entire career. That would really suck.

kstenerud 8y ago

Once this phase is complete, the true manacles will come out: targeted collective punishment. If your family member or friend is a bad actor, you are guilty by association, and your score suffers. This will also make you reachable even if you're not living in China. Say something China doesn't like? Your family and friends score suffers in China. Do it for too long and they disown you for their own self preservation.

fuscy 8y ago

China doesn’t have a good track record of policies: the pest control, the one child. One could also argue that their economy is also showing a crisis in the future. This system if it is unstable and has side effects will probably screw up two generations at least. The main issue I see is that people with low scores can “infect” other people’s scores. Considering this like a viral phenomenon the score will be impacted starting with family, friends, colleagues, strangers. I can’t see a solution except going the old route of “killing the nine family relations”. I can see some kind of ghetto of low social score people doing barter and what not. There are some contradictions like donating blood giving good score but what if for someone with a low score. There goes empathy if punished. Or some exploits like colluding and creating cartels of increasing social score artificially.