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Facebook is the defense contractor that is building America's Great Firewall and social credit system, so it makes sense that there is a revolving door with the

Facebook is the defense contractor that is building America's Great Firewall and social credit system, so it makes sense that there is a revolving door with the authoritarian regime.

i_am_nomad 8y ago
I’m not familiar with either of those two projects. Perhaps the latter is the aggregation of numerous “good customer” scores, plus actual credit rating, plus the no-fly list. But I haven’t heard about an actual program that implements a social credit score that FB is implementing.
- gdsdfe 8y ago
  It's called sarcasm
  - pstuart 8y ago
    Or "speculation"
    - djohnston 8y ago
      or lying
    - resters 8y ago
      It's actually just synthesis.
- resters 8y ago
  Facebook's social graph and engagement data combined with data already obtained by governments makes an elaborate social credit score easy to generate. As for the great firewall, Facebook has been in talks with lawmakers who want Facebook to do more to prevent "fake news" which is another way of saying that lawmakers want to use Facebook to control the news narrative. So far, Facebook has been extremely complaint with both of these areas. This new hire is further evidence that Facebook plans to support user privacy only after offering the government plenty of reassurance that its interests and patriot act powers will not be adversely impacted. I've been concerned/cynical about Facebook's stance on this stuff for a while, but this hire is really chilling. If anyone reading this hasn't read the Patriot Act, give it a read. It is shocking both in how stupid and technologically naive the wording is, as well as in its blatant disregard for the bill of rights. It's definitely the most shameful piece of legislation passed in my lifetime.
  - traek 8y ago
    I’d say it’s the media and general public that want Facebook to curb “fake news”, more so than Washington.
    - resters 8y ago
      See the tit for tat between Facebook and lawmakers: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-made-mistakes-on-fake-news-privacy-1523289089 https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-made-m... Zuck is losing on purpose here by admitting they screwed up, so that he can pivot into a negotiating stance to determine what level of control government will get. This is not all decided yet, it is still in play but this hire suggests that some progress was made in the negotiation.
    - inflatableDodo 8y ago
      'The Media' includes The Daily Mail and Fox News. The general public on average don't want facebook to curb 'their' news, perhaps those other people's. Washington has been shouting fake news from both sides for a while. Is worth noting that Trump just copied something already being said by others and mashed the definition.
- belorn 8y ago
  "I was having a conversation with a senior government official I have know all these many years who work in the White House and I said you're changing American society. He said well we realize that we need a robust social graph of the United States. I said, you mean the United States Government is from now on going to keep a list of everybody every American knows, do you think by any chance that should require a law? And he just laughed." - talk in 2012 by Eben Moglen Why do we think the government, almost 10 years ago, wanted a robust social graph of every citizen in the United States?
pascoej 8y ago
What are you referring to?
- djohnston 8y ago
  nothing. he's referring to nothing because none of that is true in even the most expansive non-tinfoil-hat-wearing imaginations.
djakjxnanjak 8y ago
Why do we need a social credit score when we already have money?
- mindslight 8y ago
  Money has inconvenient qualities for those in power: 1. Actually using it results in parting with it (rather than being able to merely present it over and over) 2. Money held by outsiders is just as valuable as money held by insiders (giving outsiders independent power) #1 is mitigated by the inflationary treadmill policy, and #2 is mitigated by oxymoronic "money laundering" regulations. But the authoritarians in power are always seeking new ways of eroding distributed paradigms.
Dangeranger 8y ago
We already have a social credit score. It's called FICO and it's been doing a great job of making life difficult for people who don't fit the mold for over sixty years.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > We already have a social credit score. It's called FICO There is a material difference between FICO and what China and, potentially, Facebook are building. FICO looks at financial factors. It's a model to estimate likelihood of repayment. Being brown or gay or female might correlate with factors that reduce the likelihood of repayment. But if those systemic problems were fixed, and FICO were left unchanged, it should yield an unbiased result. Social credit scores, on the other hand, directly incorporate biases. Introduce a social credit score into an economically equal society and it will redistribute from the "undesirable" to the "desirable" based on zero economic facts. (Same with ad-driven social networks like Facebook and Instagram.) It's subtle. But it makes a world of difference in terms of effect and the moral culpability of those who choose to support its development and deployment.
  - taurath 8y ago
    There's not really such thing as an unbiased result, especially as it deals with economics. Thats kind of the point of the concept of systemic margininalization.
- longerthoughts 8y ago
  What alternative would you propose?
  - resters 8y ago
    For what goal?
- godelski 8y ago
  Can we stop making this comparison? At best it is naive at worst you're purposefully misrepresenting the argument. When people say "social credit score" they distinctly mean something different than "credit score" (you may get this hint by the extra word, "social"). A social credit system not only includes your finances, but as well as much about your behavior. Such as "do you buy cigarettes? How often?" FICO doesn't care about this, they just care about if you're likely to pay back debt (based on your track record of doing exactly that). FICO doesn't care if you're Muslim, black, white, Christian, etc. But a social credit system DOES. Rather than putting a score on your likelihood of paying back debt, a social credit score scores you on how "good of a citizen" you are. Not just legally, but morally. And that's the danger. Morals shift and vary a lot (more so in the US than most countries). There's a general belief in most first world countries that your skin color, religion, gender, etc should not play a role in how the government of businesses treat you. Social credit systems (even if they don't explicitly add those factors: ie implicit) will use these factors to rate you.
iheartpotatoes 8y ago
Only if you are forced to use facebook. Its more of a problem in developing nations. I'm glad Myanmar finally gave Facebook the boot as the default portal to the internet. When the day comes that we are forced to use a social media platform... heh, we'll all just roll over and start using it. Revolution takes too much effort.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  Unfortunately Facebook does its best to track those of us who don't use it as well (even if their information on us ends up being less comprehensive than the information they have on their actual users).
  - godelski 8y ago
    And you can be pretty effective at that tracking if your contacts use facebook. Since they have access to your call logs they know how frequently you communicate with someone. And people that communicate frequently share general interests.
dymk 8y ago
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- resters 8y ago
  I think that my comment is pretty much the relevant thing to discuss based on the article. If you disagree please explain why.
  - dymk 8y ago
    1) Asserting the presence of an "American Great Firewall" 2) Asserting the development of an American "social credit system" 3) Describing America's political atmosphere as an "authoritarian regime" 4) Describing Facebook as a "defense contractor" Come on, you know what you're doing
    - aerodog 8y ago
      What you're doing is far worse
    - resters 8y ago
      Anyone is free to draw a line in the sand to claim that my statements are hyperbole. I don't consider them so. When we read about China, the narrative of American Exceptionalism tells us that it is reasonable to think that China would seriously implement a social credit score but America would not. I think it is foolish to believe that kind of stuff. Let's just look at the facts. We must ask how a social credit system would be useful to any government and wonder how any government would turn down the chance to obtain one. There is already hard evidence that the US Government wants to influence FB's news feed algorithm. Strictly speaking that is not a firewall, but the effect (censorship) is the same. So feel free to belabor the difference between government meddling in the news feed algorithm to promote/demote various ideas and the technology known as China's great firewall. In my view that is a tangential and distracting discussion.

Facebook is the defense contractor that is building America's Great Firewall and social credit system, so it makes sense that there is a revolving door with the authoritarian regime.

i_am_nomad 8y ago

I’m not familiar with either of those two projects. Perhaps the latter is the aggregation of numerous “good customer” scores, plus actual credit rating, plus the no-fly list. But I haven’t heard about an actual program that implements a social credit score that FB is implementing.

gdsdfe 8y ago
It's called sarcasm
- pstuart 8y ago
  Or "speculation"
  - djohnston 8y ago
    or lying
  - resters 8y ago
    It's actually just synthesis.
resters 8y ago
Facebook's social graph and engagement data combined with data already obtained by governments makes an elaborate social credit score easy to generate. As for the great firewall, Facebook has been in talks with lawmakers who want Facebook to do more to prevent "fake news" which is another way of saying that lawmakers want to use Facebook to control the news narrative. So far, Facebook has been extremely complaint with both of these areas. This new hire is further evidence that Facebook plans to support user privacy only after offering the government plenty of reassurance that its interests and patriot act powers will not be adversely impacted. I've been concerned/cynical about Facebook's stance on this stuff for a while, but this hire is really chilling. If anyone reading this hasn't read the Patriot Act, give it a read. It is shocking both in how stupid and technologically naive the wording is, as well as in its blatant disregard for the bill of rights. It's definitely the most shameful piece of legislation passed in my lifetime.
- traek 8y ago
  I’d say it’s the media and general public that want Facebook to curb “fake news”, more so than Washington.
  - resters 8y ago
    See the tit for tat between Facebook and lawmakers: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-made-mistakes-on-fake-news-privacy-1523289089 https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-made-m... Zuck is losing on purpose here by admitting they screwed up, so that he can pivot into a negotiating stance to determine what level of control government will get. This is not all decided yet, it is still in play but this hire suggests that some progress was made in the negotiation.
  - inflatableDodo 8y ago
    'The Media' includes The Daily Mail and Fox News. The general public on average don't want facebook to curb 'their' news, perhaps those other people's. Washington has been shouting fake news from both sides for a while. Is worth noting that Trump just copied something already being said by others and mashed the definition.
belorn 8y ago
"I was having a conversation with a senior government official I have know all these many years who work in the White House and I said you're changing American society. He said well we realize that we need a robust social graph of the United States. I said, you mean the United States Government is from now on going to keep a list of everybody every American knows, do you think by any chance that should require a law? And he just laughed." - talk in 2012 by Eben Moglen Why do we think the government, almost 10 years ago, wanted a robust social graph of every citizen in the United States?

pascoej 8y ago

What are you referring to?

djohnston 8y ago
nothing. he's referring to nothing because none of that is true in even the most expansive non-tinfoil-hat-wearing imaginations.

djakjxnanjak 8y ago

Why do we need a social credit score when we already have money?

mindslight 8y ago
Money has inconvenient qualities for those in power: 1. Actually using it results in parting with it (rather than being able to merely present it over and over) 2. Money held by outsiders is just as valuable as money held by insiders (giving outsiders independent power) #1 is mitigated by the inflationary treadmill policy, and #2 is mitigated by oxymoronic "money laundering" regulations. But the authoritarians in power are always seeking new ways of eroding distributed paradigms.

Dangeranger 8y ago

We already have a social credit score. It's called FICO and it's been doing a great job of making life difficult for people who don't fit the mold for over sixty years.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> We already have a social credit score. It's called FICO There is a material difference between FICO and what China and, potentially, Facebook are building. FICO looks at financial factors. It's a model to estimate likelihood of repayment. Being brown or gay or female might correlate with factors that reduce the likelihood of repayment. But if those systemic problems were fixed, and FICO were left unchanged, it should yield an unbiased result. Social credit scores, on the other hand, directly incorporate biases. Introduce a social credit score into an economically equal society and it will redistribute from the "undesirable" to the "desirable" based on zero economic facts. (Same with ad-driven social networks like Facebook and Instagram.) It's subtle. But it makes a world of difference in terms of effect and the moral culpability of those who choose to support its development and deployment.
- taurath 8y ago
  There's not really such thing as an unbiased result, especially as it deals with economics. Thats kind of the point of the concept of systemic margininalization.
longerthoughts 8y ago
What alternative would you propose?
- resters 8y ago
  For what goal?
godelski 8y ago
Can we stop making this comparison? At best it is naive at worst you're purposefully misrepresenting the argument. When people say "social credit score" they distinctly mean something different than "credit score" (you may get this hint by the extra word, "social"). A social credit system not only includes your finances, but as well as much about your behavior. Such as "do you buy cigarettes? How often?" FICO doesn't care about this, they just care about if you're likely to pay back debt (based on your track record of doing exactly that). FICO doesn't care if you're Muslim, black, white, Christian, etc. But a social credit system DOES. Rather than putting a score on your likelihood of paying back debt, a social credit score scores you on how "good of a citizen" you are. Not just legally, but morally. And that's the danger. Morals shift and vary a lot (more so in the US than most countries). There's a general belief in most first world countries that your skin color, religion, gender, etc should not play a role in how the government of businesses treat you. Social credit systems (even if they don't explicitly add those factors: ie implicit) will use these factors to rate you.

iheartpotatoes 8y ago

Only if you are forced to use facebook. Its more of a problem in developing nations. I'm glad Myanmar finally gave Facebook the boot as the default portal to the internet. When the day comes that we are forced to use a social media platform... heh, we'll all just roll over and start using it. Revolution takes too much effort.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago
Unfortunately Facebook does its best to track those of us who don't use it as well (even if their information on us ends up being less comprehensive than the information they have on their actual users).
- godelski 8y ago
  And you can be pretty effective at that tracking if your contacts use facebook. Since they have access to your call logs they know how frequently you communicate with someone. And people that communicate frequently share general interests.

dymk 8y ago

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

resters 8y ago
I think that my comment is pretty much the relevant thing to discuss based on the article. If you disagree please explain why.
- dymk 8y ago
  1) Asserting the presence of an "American Great Firewall" 2) Asserting the development of an American "social credit system" 3) Describing America's political atmosphere as an "authoritarian regime" 4) Describing Facebook as a "defense contractor" Come on, you know what you're doing
  - aerodog 8y ago
    What you're doing is far worse
  - resters 8y ago
    Anyone is free to draw a line in the sand to claim that my statements are hyperbole. I don't consider them so. When we read about China, the narrative of American Exceptionalism tells us that it is reasonable to think that China would seriously implement a social credit score but America would not. I think it is foolish to believe that kind of stuff. Let's just look at the facts. We must ask how a social credit system would be useful to any government and wonder how any government would turn down the chance to obtain one. There is already hard evidence that the US Government wants to influence FB's news feed algorithm. Strictly speaking that is not a firewall, but the effect (censorship) is the same. So feel free to belabor the difference between government meddling in the news feed algorithm to promote/demote various ideas and the technology known as China's great firewall. In my view that is a tangential and distracting discussion.