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There was a comment that appeared for a few minutes before getting deleted, that vaguely lined up with what I wanted to say. It didn't reappear, so I'll just re

• wvenable 1y ago
  You can always move to new town and start again. The problem with all these social credit systems is that they're designed to follow you wherever you go forever. There is also zero recourse if a mistake was made; at least you can try and smooth things over with a bartender.
  • otterley 1y ago
    > You can always move to new town and start again. Contra: "Wherever you go, there you are." (i.e., you don't stop being an asshole just because you move.)
    • wvenable 1y ago
      Of course, you are exactly the same person you were in your 20s and didn't improve one bit. Did you make mistakes? Too bad. That's you forever. Learning from mistakes is impossible.
      • otterley 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • Majestic121 1y ago
          They are surely not the only one to have make mistakes in their life. It's literally a lesson from the Bible: "Let him who is without sin among you, cast the first stone at her." I'm telling on myself too, yeah.
          • otterley 1y ago
            Of course people should learn from their mistakes and constantly improve. But if you respond like an asshole to a comment, it means you haven't learned the lessons you should have. IOW, the commenter is proving my point.
            • entropicdrifter 1y ago
              >But if you respond like an asshole to a comment, it means you haven't learned the lessons you should have. IOW, the commenter is proving my point. The irony here is palpable. Buy a mirror.
              • otterley 1y ago
                I appreciate the feedback.
            • argomo 1y ago
              If we're assessing the assholeyness of comments, yours aren't coming across all that favorably IMO, but perhaps this conversation is victim to the loss of context and inflection that other commenters have lamented.
              • otterley 1y ago
                I admit I could have been more eloquent in my response.
            • Dylan16807 1y ago
              Their comment was fine. Also, nothing says they were talking about themselves, so no they didn't prove your point.
              • otterley 1y ago
                I'm not sure how responding sarcastically is "fine." I've found that in real life, people don't respond well to sarcastic responses to ordinary conversation.
      • charcircuit 1y ago
        Like credit scores events can be made to decay overtime.
        • wvenable 1y ago
          What I've seen with these large services like Google is that once they deem you undesirable (either on purpose or by accident) then they're just done with you forever. They have so many customers and so many bad actors that it's just not worth it to give anyone a second chance. It's pretty horrible for people caught in that situation. We would need some kind of legislation around this. No company is looking to decay scores over time unless there is some profit motive to be exploited (like there is with credit scores).
          • otterley 1y ago
            What's the tangible financial impact to someone who's been deemed undesirable by Google? Bear in mind that you can mitigate a lot of risk by operating as a business instead of establishing a relationship in an individual capacity. And people, much like businesses, need disaster recovery plans. We advise people to have escape plans from their homes; similarly, they should have escape plans for their critical information. Almost nothing in this world is risk-free.
            • bialpio 1y ago
              > What's the tangible financial impact to someone who's been deemed undesirable by Google? Depends how deep you got. I for one would lose access to my mobile phone (Google Fi) and email, so it would be very hard for me to get access to anything that uses my phone number for 2FA. Or the email address for any kind of account recovery. Huge nuisance but maybe no financial consequences, except maybe an involuntary trip to the bank's branch to access the account.
    • bigstrat2003 1y ago
      Of course that's the case, but the point is that if you change for the better you have a chance to start with a clean slate. You do not have such a chance when everything is in a centrally managed database.
    • maxerickson 1y ago
      And also, many places are big enough that you don't need to move, just go to the place a few blocks over.
    • account42 1y ago
      Being an "asshole" is often subjective so no, it does not apply equally wherever you go.
  • lovich 1y ago
    The following you everywhere is a major problem with these systems imo, mostly because it removed the equivalent of bankruptcy for your reputation. If you had to move across the country to leave your bad name behind, you used to be able to. And just like bankruptcy you’d start with nothing so it wasn’t exactly easy but it was at least an option. Now what recourse do people have?
    • pavel_lishin 1y ago
      Much like bankrupcy - which isn't just a wiping of the blank slate, it's actually a last resort situation - there is the option of changing your name, opening new bank accounts, and creating new digital accounts under the new identity. Is it easy? No, but neither is declaring bankruptcy or moving across the country.
    • shadowgovt 1y ago
      Therapy and rehabilitation within the society, paying your dues and making amends.
    • grues-dinner 1y ago
      Also people turning up in a town one day with no one to vouch for them were assumed to be up to no good as it could be assumed that you'd do just that if you were escaping your previous reputation. You could start with less than nothing by default, and may never shake it, and that's before race or religion. > "If you weren’t born and raised here, you’re an outsider even though you’ve lived here for thirty-five years. That’s just kind of typical in small communities." https://dokumen.pub/small-town-america-finding-community-shaping-the-future-course-booknbsped-9781400846498.html https://dokumen.pub/small-town-america-finding-community-sha...
      • ahazred8ta 1y ago
        In small town New England, to this day, the litmus test is whether you graduated from the local high school, meaning you're probably related to other people in town. If you moved here at the age of 19 you're SOL.
    • 1y ago
  • Swenrekcah 1y ago
    The larger problem is that the owner of the credit scheme, whether a corporation or a government, can use it to punish people and depending on the scheme effectively making people social outcasts, without any due process.
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      Due process isn't some silver bullet. Jim crow, witch trials, they all followed due process. But yeah it's better than some capricious bureaucrat just pulling decisions out their ass with no serious recourse, except all those cases there the process is just that.
      • Swenrekcah 1y ago
        Nothing in the world is perfect. Breathing and eating are no silver bullets for staying alive because sometimes people choke on their food and they could also breath toxic fumes. Still it's a pretty solid choice to keep doing both.
        • potato3732842 1y ago
          My point is that due process is tangential to fairness or reasonableness.
          • Swenrekcah 1y ago
            This may be a misunderstanding between us. What is referred to by “due process” is the whole and entire ecosystem of laws and a judicial system with trials, representation, judges and predefined appropriate sentencing structures. The whole and entire point of all of this, is fairness and reasonableness. The fact that mistakes are sometimes made, even corruption sometimes, does not really change things. If corruption becomes common the system starts to fail and either reforms are made or the system decays into authoritarianism.
      • account42 1y ago
        And your locks aren't perfectly secure so you may as well hand me the keys.
  • everdrive 1y ago
    That's modern technology; the worst of both worlds. The moralistic tyranny of the small town, but the crowded, violent, and lonely social environment of a major city.
    • corimaith 1y ago
      That's what the mainstream chose, not what technology was by itself.
      • int_19h 1y ago
        The "moralistic tyranny" is arguably the natural consequence of how humans are, but technology is what allowed it to scale.
        • corimaith 1y ago
          No. The old internet had it's problems, but they maintained the boundary between the net and reality. The mainstream didn't, and I believe the attitudes of that larger society are circumstancial and shaped by certain forces.
  • card_zero 1y ago
    Yeah, automation and information sharing prevents people slipping through the cracks, and that also prevents leniency, diversity, and reason. I was musing over something, though. We have creeping Orwellian things like face recognition and the policing of chat histories. But some of this is private, as in, not done by the state. Even when done by the state, it isn't in most places to prop up the regime and prevent dissent. It's big brother mechanisms without a Big Brother. I speculate that it's genuinely motivated by preventing disorder, because (is this true?) over the last couple of decades people have got more disorderly in petty ways to do with thieving and harassing and scamming one another. Then the people don't like it, and so the people politically demand heavy-handed policing of the people.
    • etrautmann 1y ago
      It also ignores context or interpretation, and forces one perspective on incentives that doesn't necessarily reflect reality.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • mlinhares 1y ago
      Nah, there's no increase in disorder, crime in most developed countries is trending down, but we do have a bunch of people that have collected unimaginable wealth and are definitely afraid something will happen to them like the last couple times this has happened. They definitely don't want to repeat history and will use the coercion tools they have to clamp down on the peasants.
      • card_zero 1y ago
        > afraid something will happen to them Because of what, the decrease in crime?
        • mlinhares 1y ago
          Who knows, you'll have to go to their leaked private chats to see the madness they're conjuring there.
  • chuckadams 1y ago
    The bartender also doesn't sell your behavioral profile to every other bar in town. I mean, unless you're a total asshole and it's a small town, but then they tend to volunteer it.
    • randycupertino 1y ago
      SF bartenders united to try and ban this serial check-skipper: https://www.tiktok.com/@ktvu2/video/7459844103635733803 https://www.tiktok.com/@ktvu2/video/7459844103635733803
      • stretchwithme 1y ago
        Good. If the legal system won't do it, people SHOULD.
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
      • int_19h 1y ago
        That feels like an exception that proves the rule, though - i.e. this is something requiring effort and thus reserved for egregious offenders, not a routine thing.
    • jamesbrek98 1y ago
      but the Stripe or Square credit card reader you use to pay for drinks does ["but I use Apple Pay ...."].
  • bigcat12345678 1y ago
    > at least you can try and smooth things over with a bartender. Hahah... You never offended a bartender for sure.
    • pixxel 1y ago
      [dead]
  • rendaw 1y ago
    Isn't being able to move to a new town and start again also a kind of new thing though too? Cars, moving companies, open borders, globalism, English as a standard language, no serfdom, etc. I mean, I think you could pick up and move but it was much harder, and how far you could reasonably move when you did move was limited pre-modern era. If you can't move that far, the likelihood of someone knowing you or word spreading is probably higher. Although I remember seeing an article here on movement of serfs a while back, I think the conclusion was that they were more mobile than one might think.
    • alexpotato 1y ago
      In the book Fingerprints[0], they mention how, prior to fingerprints, much easier it was to just move to another town/county/state and just start over or even pretend to be somebody else. This was because there was no way to establish your identity with near 100% certainty. This had pros and cons depending on who you were. For example, thieves loved it as you could drop you criminal record simply by moving somewhere that no one recognized you. On the other hand, there were documented cases of mistaken identity and people being prosecuted just because they looked like someone else. Then there is the case of William West which is better understood by looking at the pictures of two men names William West [1] Contrast that to today where it doesn't matter which town in the US you live in, there is always a credit record that is tied to you. 0 - https://amzn.to/47XN9Id https://amzn.to/47XN9Id 1 - https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/will-william-west-case-fingerprints/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/will-william-west-case-fing...
  • platevoltage 1y ago
    What happens if in one town you lose your job, and get evicted from your apartment, or default on your mortgage? You're going to have trouble with housing in that next town.
  • gizmo686 1y ago
    Most of our social credit systems let you start over. The big ones (credit score and criminal history) are strongly tied to you, but have recourse to challenge mistakes and remove strikes from your record. The sufficiency of those recourses is open for debate though. However, all of the private company's social credit systems have a much looser coupling to your actual ID. Often you can just make a new account. If you first get a new credit card, phone, phone number, internet connection, and address, most companies would completely fail to correlate you to their previous profile of you.
  • coro_1 1y ago
    > You can always move to new town and start again. This is accurate. And taken for granted in the US. Someone once remarked to me: "I think it's cool you can just pick up and go anywhere (on a huge scale)" - They were from the Netherlands.
    • eloisant 1y ago
      Well they can move anywhere in the EU, visa free.
      • eldaisfish 1y ago
        Legally, yes. Practically, the EU still has borders and barriers. Language, pension systems, degree equivalence, etc. Oh and also remember that the EU has freedom of movement for labour, not necessarily people. If you don’t have enough money, you can’t just move to another EU country and hope things work out.
        • UncleSlacky 1y ago
          You can as long as it "works out" (i.e. you find a job) within 3 months.
• Natsu 1y ago
  I think there's some difference between distributed reputation among many different groups for different purposes and a top-down, centralized reputation from the government that controls most of what you can do in life. One is more distributed and not controlled by any single entity, the other puts all the power over your life into the hands of a few oligarchs.
• themafia 1y ago
  The difference is the relationship between the bartender, the non-profit or the barista all revolve around physical locations where cash transactions or real work occur. There's actual direct value to be measured in the interaction. Further my interactions with the bartender aren't likely to be measured or even known about by the non-profit and vice versa. To the extent my "credit" is a factor it doesn't travel with me from location to location.
  • gruez 1y ago
    >the non-profit or the barista all revolve around physical locations where cash transactions or real work occur. There's actual direct value to be measured in the interaction. I don't see how this is a relevant factor. If you're a karen at a restaurant who constantly sends your food back for the tiniest of issues, how is that any different than if the interaction happened online, such as if amazon gave you a bad customer credit score for your excessive returns? >Further my interactions with the bartender aren't likely to be measured or even known about by the non-profit and vice versa. To the extent my "credit" is a factor it doesn't travel with me from location to location. Word travels around, does it not? Moreover why is it relevant whether it's a number sitting on a database somewhere, compared to some vibes sitting in some guy's head?
    • themafia 1y ago
      > such as if amazon gave you a bad customer credit score for your excessive returns? Is amazon going to tell me that up front? In the restaurant case the manager can explain the issue to the customer and ask them not to come in again. It becomes immediately resolvable whereas in your example I have no idea what just happened to me. > Word travels around, does it not? The difference between the analog word and the digital word is extreme. > compared to some vibes sitting in some guy's head? I live in a town of 2 million people. These vibes have zero impact. Add them to a database that can be tied to my credit card number? Now they have real impact. I don't think that's a reasonable or desirable outcome. The problem with these systems isn't their mere existence it's their draconian implementations.
      • 1y ago
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  I wish this type of social credit existed online.
  • al_borland 1y ago
    This is what karma scores on site like this or Reddit try to replicate.
    • gruez 1y ago
      Not really, because such sites really only use upvotes/downvotes as a ranking mechanism. There's theoretically a lifetime upvote/downvote counter (ie. your karma), but other than a number that shows up on your profile, it doesn't have any real impact. You don't really develop a "reputation", for instance your comments get more or less visibility based on your previous commenting history.
      • al_borland 1y ago
        There were a couple occasions on Reddit where someone replied to me in seemingly bad faith. I looked and they had negative karma. As a result, I didn’t engage. But I will agree that it’s far from perfect. It’s also similar to the bar example. A reputation is built one person at a time. It takes a while, with repeated bad behavior, to build a bad reputation with the entire staff or regulars.
      • randycupertino 1y ago
        > other than a number that shows up on your profile, it doesn't have any real impact. Certain subreddits you can't comment on until you have a minimum # of karma, some other subs auto-ban you if you contribute or subscribe to other subs.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
      Yes. And fails. Trolls don't care about karma and can run about being a dick until they're finally banned (possibly years later) rinse and repeat with a new account.
• jollyllama 1y ago
  Sure, but without a credit score, the only way people can be prejudiced against you is through your appearance or through gossip. A credit score carries with it a weight that approximates official statements - news coverage, legal judgements - that others are much less likely to take with a grain of salt, as they would a casual hearsay accusation.
• slowhadoken 1y ago
  That’s a subjective mess. How do you objectively weight the value of those experiences? It also won’t stop gossip, PR, and propaganda. Just look at the state of Rotten Tomatoes. Now imagine Fandango buying your social credit website and making Harvey Weinstein a 10/10 good person.
• poszlem 1y ago
  True, reputation has always existed. But after a certain scale, quantity becomes a quality of its own. There’s a big difference between word-of-mouth at a single bar and a centralized, algorithmic reputation score that can follow you across dozens of services. If one bartender thinks you’re rude, you can go to another bar. If one nonprofit doesn’t like you, you can still volunteer elsewhere. But when a social media company or platform blacklists you, it can ripple through your professional, social, and even financial life, because their influence extends far beyond one community. That’s the leap from local memory to systemic gatekeeping.
• torben-friis 1y ago
  That heavily depends on where you live. In large, dense cities you’re pretty much anonymous; I could dance naked in a main street today and (provided no one’s recording) carry on with my life with zero repercussions. Some people make a living out of that fact. Tourist traps do not exactly engage recurring customers, every purchase is a customer’s first.
• wtbdbrrr 1y ago
  yep. and people don't just remember. sometimes they set you up to test you and or to give you a chance. some other times they set someone else up to test you and or to give you a chance. and sometimes people poison others to increase their and or your social credit. as Austin Powers (or was it Ali G?) said quite eloquently: "behave".
• pimlottc 1y ago
  Real world social credit is soft and squishy and local and fades or changes over time. Digital social credit is (potentially) an automatically calculated number with strict and unyielding consequences that follows you around for your entire life.
  • anywhichway 1y ago
    A lot of digital ones are "local" too in that they are context specific. As long as it stays context specific, your Uber rating is closer to being liked by your local bar tender than it is to the Chinese social credit system. Even your local bartender has a little context leakage. I agree there is a scarier potential there. And also some do, on occasion, escape their context (mostly credit score). They also have bigger contexts, but not so big that I would jump to the Chinese social credit comparison.
  • causal 1y ago
    And a digital social credit system can be manipulated to drive behavioral changes en-masse. It centralizes power. Harder to do that with word-of-mouth.
• ozim 1y ago
  I think that comment overestimated how much people really remember. That bartender most likely has 3 to 5 worse assholes every shift and dozen usual assholes . He is not going to remember he doesn’t care. Local non profit after 2 years most likely won’t have the same people and top guys won’t remember all one off volunteers. Believing any of it having more significance would be attributed to “spotlight effect” in my opinion.
• KolibriFly 1y ago
  Reputation has always been a kind of "social credit," the difference now is scale and opacity
• SkyBelow 1y ago
  Such as system does exist, but it is filled with issues. Halo effect and other biases impact memories, in ways that we would not tolerate being made explicit. We are more forgiving of some people than others, we tolerate some forms of stress as a possible excuse (not a complete removal, but to allow for much quicker redemption) than other forms of stress. Rules are selectively applied, and this all gets fed into confirmation biases where we overlook the bad done by people labeled as good and the good done by people labeled as bad (often with the labels themselves being unjustified in their application). The larger the social network grows, the worse this system performs. Stereotypes develop because we don't have capacity to judge each individual, confirmation biases reinforce stereotypes until individuals cease to exist, as the stereotype prevents them from becoming close enough to ever overcome it. So while this system has always existed (well at least as long as recorded history), it continuously worsens and is increasingly at odds with a globalized world.
• jiscariot 1y ago
  Using the author's loose criteria, one could say a criminal record is a social credit system. These are the emergent fruits of living in a complex society, where one cannot realistically track reputation of everyone they encounter across all areas of life. We could move away from some of the formalized systems, if we decided to go back to shaming people for poor behaviors.