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Opportunities and Challenges of Emerging Technologies for Refugees (2019) [pdf]

29 points by benbreen 7y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> Projects such as the Online Hate Index have helped social and political scientists identify patterns between people’s online and offline social and political behaviour. They have the potential to assist governments and intergovernmental agencies to predict civil unrest and find better policies and solution to address its root causes from the very early stages. This sounds like the Western version of China's Social Credit System.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  So it turns out independent of whether governments / social scientists / political scientists would find such a thing useful, the Social Credit System reflects an underlying thing that people actually want, especially in this modern era of anonymous behavior and online personae disjoint from a person's IRL persona: the ability to estimate a stranger's reputation based on past behavior. It's something that we had as small villages where "everyone knew everyone" that we've lost in the modern era, and people want it back. In the West, it's likely not going to be tracked by governments but is absolutely going to be offered by private institutions (for credit, it already is by several credit reporting agencies; social reputation is on the near-term horizon as well, with the ease of consolidating a person's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn profiles using modern techniques).
  - petermcneeley 7y ago
    It's nothing like the reputation of a small village. Reputation in a village is relatively peer to peer. The system here is technocratic and top down. It is by its natural purely totalitarian.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      I don't disagree, and yet I think it will be built and people will use it anyway outside of China. I wonder if multiple competing reputation schema will have any impact on the totalitarian aspect of it, or if we'll just have our choice of despotic masters.
  - sebow 7y ago
    >In the West, it's likely not going to be tracked by governments And what exactly makes you think that? You think EU institutions don't track people just because we have certain values? You're very naive, arguably western societies track as much as possible without clogging themselves up from the bureaucracy of centralization(this is what leads to communism's inefficiency).This happens right now with the EU, and is why US is doing so well, because they've found the right balance: minimizing(or at least trying,while being held accountable by the population) the government's interference in people's lives while still providing the most basic utilities: borders, security, opportunities for business,etc. It's good to acknowledge that companies do this today and are growing very fast in power, but many times those companies just "beta-test" things that will eventually get implemented to a nation-wide scale.(This is particularly true with Google and the chinese government)
  - ameister14 7y ago
    >It's something that we had as small villages where "everyone knew everyone" that we've lost in the modern era, and people want it back. We haven't lost it in the modern era. We lost that in terms of major population centers thousands of years ago, but still have it today in small communities. As far as wanting it back, I take it you've never lived in a small community. There are serious benefits but one of the issues anyone who isn't entirely normal deals with is the fact that when everyone knows everyone, you stand out and are judged more. It maintains stability but can stifle personal growth and innovation.
- petermcneeley 7y ago
  Sounds like you are going to be able to better relate to a (political) refugee in the not so distant future.

29 points by benbreen 7y ago

> Projects such as the Online Hate Index have helped social and political scientists identify patterns between people’s online and offline social and political behaviour. They have the potential to assist governments and intergovernmental agencies to predict civil unrest and find better policies and solution to address its root causes from the very early stages. This sounds like the Western version of China's Social Credit System.

shadowgovt 7y ago
So it turns out independent of whether governments / social scientists / political scientists would find such a thing useful, the Social Credit System reflects an underlying thing that people actually want, especially in this modern era of anonymous behavior and online personae disjoint from a person's IRL persona: the ability to estimate a stranger's reputation based on past behavior. It's something that we had as small villages where "everyone knew everyone" that we've lost in the modern era, and people want it back. In the West, it's likely not going to be tracked by governments but is absolutely going to be offered by private institutions (for credit, it already is by several credit reporting agencies; social reputation is on the near-term horizon as well, with the ease of consolidating a person's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn profiles using modern techniques).
- petermcneeley 7y ago
  It's nothing like the reputation of a small village. Reputation in a village is relatively peer to peer. The system here is technocratic and top down. It is by its natural purely totalitarian.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    I don't disagree, and yet I think it will be built and people will use it anyway outside of China. I wonder if multiple competing reputation schema will have any impact on the totalitarian aspect of it, or if we'll just have our choice of despotic masters.
- sebow 7y ago
  >In the West, it's likely not going to be tracked by governments And what exactly makes you think that? You think EU institutions don't track people just because we have certain values? You're very naive, arguably western societies track as much as possible without clogging themselves up from the bureaucracy of centralization(this is what leads to communism's inefficiency).This happens right now with the EU, and is why US is doing so well, because they've found the right balance: minimizing(or at least trying,while being held accountable by the population) the government's interference in people's lives while still providing the most basic utilities: borders, security, opportunities for business,etc. It's good to acknowledge that companies do this today and are growing very fast in power, but many times those companies just "beta-test" things that will eventually get implemented to a nation-wide scale.(This is particularly true with Google and the chinese government)
- ameister14 7y ago
  >It's something that we had as small villages where "everyone knew everyone" that we've lost in the modern era, and people want it back. We haven't lost it in the modern era. We lost that in terms of major population centers thousands of years ago, but still have it today in small communities. As far as wanting it back, I take it you've never lived in a small community. There are serious benefits but one of the issues anyone who isn't entirely normal deals with is the fact that when everyone knows everyone, you stand out and are judged more. It maintains stability but can stifle personal growth and innovation.
petermcneeley 7y ago
Sounds like you are going to be able to better relate to a (political) refugee in the not so distant future.