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.
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?<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>This system if it is unstable and has side effects will probably screw up two generations at least.<p>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”.<p>I can see some kind of ghetto of low social score people doing barter and what not.<p>There are some contradictions like donating blood giving good score but what if for someone with a low score. There goes empathy if punished.<p>Or some exploits like colluding and creating cartels of increasing social score artificially.
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.
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.<p>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.
A part of me feels like this can't possibly be a good thing.<p>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.
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.
Have not read beyond the headline, so apologies if (as is likely) I missed a critical point. However:<p>This seems likely to cause those who don't want or can't fit into the rated society China is building to emigrate.<p>The more creative, the misfits, those square pegs who don't fit in round holes... Send them our way.
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].<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-screen-tenants-automagically/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/naborly-lets-landlords-scr...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app-predictim-uses-ai-to-sniff-out-bullies/" rel="nofollow">https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/babysitter-screening-app-...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intelligence-and-profiling-in-the-insurance-industry-4958fd11f86f" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/privacy-international/social-media-intell...</a>
I can't help but think of the episode Majority Rule from The Orville, but more sinister and less campy...<p><a href="https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/" rel="nofollow">https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6845666/</a>
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.
This isn’t mature technology. It shouldn’t be opterating at this scale.<p>Following novelty can lead to many disasters.<p>I imagine that suicide and such self destructive behavior will skyrocket.
The main difference between this and the US is that US citizens are compliant enough not to warrant such explicit measures.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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:<p><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/19/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/" rel="nofollow">https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/11/19/c...</a>
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn</a><p>To the unknown person who criticized me ("people like you are what's wrong with the world") but later deleted his post:<p>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.