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> Even if a couple in the camp is allowed to marry and has children, the children will live their entire lives in the gulag unless they escape. Not sure what y

> Even if a couple in the camp is allowed to marry and has children, the children will live their entire lives in the gulag unless they escape. Not sure what your professional experience or knowledge of politics or technology is, but as a person working at a FAANG company living in the US, I would bet any amount of money that nothing like this will ever come out of any FAANG company in the next 30 years.

kadoban 4y ago
It really depends on the government(s) in which the FAANGs exist. They're not quite powerful enough to escape governments. If the USA goes all the way towards fascism, the FAANGs will go along for the ride and implement all sorts of terrible things.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  Sure I believe that, but I think because of the way these companies operate internally and because of the extraordinary amount of transparency and voice given to employees employees (particularly at Google and Facebook where I have worked), these companies would be amongst the most difficult for a hypothetical fascist US gov to use for nefarious purposes. I've worked at 3 other large US tech companies (Qualcomm, Intel, APC) besides these, and they are radically more ethically malleable and able to conceal bad things from their employees.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    All of them have done and are doing ethically questionable things already, and they really haven't had much trouble keeping people working there. Google and Facebook would be the first two I'd expect to go along with whatever awfulness, if they're not driving it themselves.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - PradeetPatel 4y ago
      Perhaps this is cultural difference at play here, before you downvote this comment to oblivion I'd like you to hear me out. In India, we were expected to create value for our stakeholders, and bringing personal political views into office is deemed highly unprofessional. This doesn't stop the junior talents that are highly influenced by foreign media to have a go at it, but they're often silenced with righteous resolve. Tldr: Employees that openly engages in activism are often seen as problematic elements, which severely degrade the cohesion and unity of a company, therefore they're often the first on the chopping block. Are things different in the states?
      - nosianu 4y ago
        > This doesn't stop the junior talents that are highly influenced by foreign media I don't understand. They are not influenced by the local media, somehow? Only "foreign" one? What is the magical mechanism behind that? And of course, it's only "activism" when it does against the accepted order. The activism supporting current powers flows much more smoothly and does not cause any such ripples, so you conclude it does not exist?
      - pydry 4y ago
        This isnt cultural. This "deemed unprofessional" and "silenced with righteous resolve" is just reflective of the relative power differential between employee and employer. It's an artefact of capitalism. It also doesnt happen when the employee has more power.
      - kadoban 4y ago
        > bringing personal political views into office is deemed highly unprofessional Ethics are not politics. Engineers should be required to refuse unethical orders and work.
i_like_apis 4y ago
Agreed, as a thrice-faanger.
foxyv 4y ago
I wonder if workers at IBM prior to World War II would say the same about the holocaust. Something as simple as period tracking apps can be turned against people. Sure it starts off as a marketing department, then it moves on to a domestic surveillance program for terrorism, and then you are rounding up people who get abortions and miscarry. After that, who knows? Gays? Atheists?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  Agreed, and it doesn't just go one direction politically. Totalitarian governments hunted and killed Christians and capitalists with tremendous zeal throughout the 20th century. This isn't really about left/right, it's about power. Governments simply can't be trusted with the power to track and target dissidents at scale. We nerds are to a great extent the modern gatekeepers of that power. If people ask you to track and suppress free speech don't do it. It starts there.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Ahem. > "The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) At least the project was leaked by a MAMAA employee (it's no longer FAANG), but there might be a kind of 'internal social credit score program' being applied in the Big Tech world to get rid of those with pesky moral standards... Incidentally this is a major reason why democratization of corporations is important - I tend to believe the regular rank-and-file would be less willing to implement something like this than the top shareholders would.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  Yeah that's not a social credit system. It's a censored search engine. I'm fine with that, as a Google employee.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    What if it also reports your 'bad searches' back to central control and uses that as a factor in calculating your social credit score?
    - mgraczyk 4y ago
      Yeah maybe, but this is absolutely nothing like what I was responding to. Maybe Google will build tools for authoritarian regimes, maybe they'll sell them to US gov, who knows. None of that is anything like what I was responding to, a system of forced labor camps and heritable servitude. That's just not the world we live in.
      - Teever 4y ago
        The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's not that a company like Google is going to release a Google Gulag product after years of working on it in secret. What people are worried about is that the various pieces of technology that Google is developing can be used to make a horrible dystopian future and that one day, even if Google as a corporation, or the individuals who make up Google as employees decide to fight against it, they will be unable to stop a fascist government from using that technology to do exactly as is described by OP, or even worse. There are unintended consequences to everything, and you may think that America is the freest nation on Earth, and that Google is the greatest company ever, but that could quickly change. It could happen here, and we must be eternally vigilant.
tomc1985 4y ago
Oh c'mon, have some imagination. Have you not seen Black Mirror? S3E1, specifically.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  That's a TV show
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    One that shows a very plausible reality where FAANG comes out with a rating system, and how that might potentially go down.
Razengan 4y ago
> Not sure what your professional experience or knowledge of politics or technology is I’m not sure how far back in time your experience or knowledge of politics or technology goes, but there are plenty of examples of the US government using technology of all levels to target and control individuals deemed “troublesome”.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  Yeah for sure, but Google wasn't doing it.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
It already exists in the US. Every person is scored by data brokers based on their address and income.
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  That's a credit score, not a social credit score.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    It isn't credit score. That isn't easy to peddle in because it requires authorization to access. Data brokers have their own scoring system based on all the other unregulated data they have on every person.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    The fundamental difference is not perfectly clear to me.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    That's not really true either. The US credit score is a type of social credit score. Case in point: You generally cannot be a responsible adult, living within your means, and expect to have a credit score. Most utilities won't report on-time payments (and usually won't report until you are a few months late, sometimes only if you have a late final bill). Most landlords don't report. Saving for a used car doesn't earn you credit, and credit generally doesn't care if you have enough money in the bank or if you earn enough, at least if you aren't rich, anyway. Basically, you need to have the right sort of credit history and borrow in the correct fashion: For most folks, this means getting a credit card or paying too much for a used car just to prove that one day, they might be reliable enough for a new car loan or a house loan. In the meantime: Don't go into medical debt. Don't avoid most debt and simply live within your means. Don't check your credit too much (This is around 10% of your score). And not doing things correctly affects where you'll be allowed to live, where you can work, how much you pay for car insurance, and things like that. Just because it isn't just like another countries doesn't mean it isn't a social score with a different name.
nblasted 4y ago
You don't need a FAANG compaby to do this - just a sqlite database and sufficient motivation for prosecuting some cyberbullying campaigns
- nblasted 4y ago
  I mean, hell, how many facebook groups are out there that feed on persecuting outgroups? You dont need a central state to do this stuff. A state can provide the NKVD/Stasi but its peoples neighbours who use it to screw one another. Deliver them Facebook and they'll do most of a social credit system for you

kadoban 4y ago

It really depends on the government(s) in which the FAANGs exist. They're not quite powerful enough to escape governments. If the USA goes all the way towards fascism, the FAANGs will go along for the ride and implement all sorts of terrible things.

mgraczyk 4y ago
Sure I believe that, but I think because of the way these companies operate internally and because of the extraordinary amount of transparency and voice given to employees employees (particularly at Google and Facebook where I have worked), these companies would be amongst the most difficult for a hypothetical fascist US gov to use for nefarious purposes. I've worked at 3 other large US tech companies (Qualcomm, Intel, APC) besides these, and they are radically more ethically malleable and able to conceal bad things from their employees.
- kadoban 4y ago
  All of them have done and are doing ethically questionable things already, and they really haven't had much trouble keeping people working there. Google and Facebook would be the first two I'd expect to go along with whatever awfulness, if they're not driving it themselves.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - PradeetPatel 4y ago
    Perhaps this is cultural difference at play here, before you downvote this comment to oblivion I'd like you to hear me out. In India, we were expected to create value for our stakeholders, and bringing personal political views into office is deemed highly unprofessional. This doesn't stop the junior talents that are highly influenced by foreign media to have a go at it, but they're often silenced with righteous resolve. Tldr: Employees that openly engages in activism are often seen as problematic elements, which severely degrade the cohesion and unity of a company, therefore they're often the first on the chopping block. Are things different in the states?
    - nosianu 4y ago
      > This doesn't stop the junior talents that are highly influenced by foreign media I don't understand. They are not influenced by the local media, somehow? Only "foreign" one? What is the magical mechanism behind that? And of course, it's only "activism" when it does against the accepted order. The activism supporting current powers flows much more smoothly and does not cause any such ripples, so you conclude it does not exist?
    - pydry 4y ago
      This isnt cultural. This "deemed unprofessional" and "silenced with righteous resolve" is just reflective of the relative power differential between employee and employer. It's an artefact of capitalism. It also doesnt happen when the employee has more power.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      > bringing personal political views into office is deemed highly unprofessional Ethics are not politics. Engineers should be required to refuse unethical orders and work.

i_like_apis 4y ago

Agreed, as a thrice-faanger.

foxyv 4y ago

I wonder if workers at IBM prior to World War II would say the same about the holocaust. Something as simple as period tracking apps can be turned against people. Sure it starts off as a marketing department, then it moves on to a domestic surveillance program for terrorism, and then you are rounding up people who get abortions and miscarry. After that, who knows? Gays? Atheists?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ARandomerDude 4y ago
Agreed, and it doesn't just go one direction politically. Totalitarian governments hunted and killed Christians and capitalists with tremendous zeal throughout the 20th century. This isn't really about left/right, it's about power. Governments simply can't be trusted with the power to track and target dissidents at scale. We nerds are to a great extent the modern gatekeepers of that power. If people ask you to track and suppress free speech don't do it. It starts there.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Ahem. > "The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) At least the project was leaked by a MAMAA employee (it's no longer FAANG), but there might be a kind of 'internal social credit score program' being applied in the Big Tech world to get rid of those with pesky moral standards... Incidentally this is a major reason why democratization of corporations is important - I tend to believe the regular rank-and-file would be less willing to implement something like this than the top shareholders would.

mgraczyk 4y ago
Yeah that's not a social credit system. It's a censored search engine. I'm fine with that, as a Google employee.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  What if it also reports your 'bad searches' back to central control and uses that as a factor in calculating your social credit score?
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    Yeah maybe, but this is absolutely nothing like what I was responding to. Maybe Google will build tools for authoritarian regimes, maybe they'll sell them to US gov, who knows. None of that is anything like what I was responding to, a system of forced labor camps and heritable servitude. That's just not the world we live in.
    - Teever 4y ago
      The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's not that a company like Google is going to release a Google Gulag product after years of working on it in secret. What people are worried about is that the various pieces of technology that Google is developing can be used to make a horrible dystopian future and that one day, even if Google as a corporation, or the individuals who make up Google as employees decide to fight against it, they will be unable to stop a fascist government from using that technology to do exactly as is described by OP, or even worse. There are unintended consequences to everything, and you may think that America is the freest nation on Earth, and that Google is the greatest company ever, but that could quickly change. It could happen here, and we must be eternally vigilant.

tomc1985 4y ago

Oh c'mon, have some imagination. Have you not seen Black Mirror? S3E1, specifically.

mgraczyk 4y ago
That's a TV show
- tomc1985 4y ago
  One that shows a very plausible reality where FAANG comes out with a rating system, and how that might potentially go down.

Razengan 4y ago

> Not sure what your professional experience or knowledge of politics or technology is I’m not sure how far back in time your experience or knowledge of politics or technology goes, but there are plenty of examples of the US government using technology of all levels to target and control individuals deemed “troublesome”.

mgraczyk 4y ago
Yeah for sure, but Google wasn't doing it.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

It already exists in the US. Every person is scored by data brokers based on their address and income.

themacguffinman 4y ago
That's a credit score, not a social credit score.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  It isn't credit score. That isn't easy to peddle in because it requires authorization to access. Data brokers have their own scoring system based on all the other unregulated data they have on every person.
- adrianN 4y ago
  The fundamental difference is not perfectly clear to me.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  That's not really true either. The US credit score is a type of social credit score. Case in point: You generally cannot be a responsible adult, living within your means, and expect to have a credit score. Most utilities won't report on-time payments (and usually won't report until you are a few months late, sometimes only if you have a late final bill). Most landlords don't report. Saving for a used car doesn't earn you credit, and credit generally doesn't care if you have enough money in the bank or if you earn enough, at least if you aren't rich, anyway. Basically, you need to have the right sort of credit history and borrow in the correct fashion: For most folks, this means getting a credit card or paying too much for a used car just to prove that one day, they might be reliable enough for a new car loan or a house loan. In the meantime: Don't go into medical debt. Don't avoid most debt and simply live within your means. Don't check your credit too much (This is around 10% of your score). And not doing things correctly affects where you'll be allowed to live, where you can work, how much you pay for car insurance, and things like that. Just because it isn't just like another countries doesn't mean it isn't a social score with a different name.

nblasted 4y ago

You don't need a FAANG compaby to do this - just a sqlite database and sufficient motivation for prosecuting some cyberbullying campaigns

nblasted 4y ago
I mean, hell, how many facebook groups are out there that feed on persecuting outgroups? You dont need a central state to do this stuff. A state can provide the NKVD/Stasi but its peoples neighbours who use it to screw one another. Deliver them Facebook and they'll do most of a social credit system for you