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China Pilots a System That Rates Citizens on 'Social Credit Score' To Determine Eligibility For Jobs, Travel (technologyreview.com)
Speculations have turned out be true. The Chinese government is now testing systems that will be used to create digital records of citizens' social and financial behavior. In turn, these will be used to create a so-called social credit score, which will determine whether individuals have access to services, from travel and education to loans and insurance cover. Some citizens -- such as lawyers and journalists -- will be more closely monitored. From a report on MIT Technology Review: Planning documents apparently describe the system as being created to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." The Journal claims that the system will at first log "infractions such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules" but will be expanded in the future -- potentially even to Internet activity. Some aspects of the system are already in testing, but there are some challenges to implementing such a far-reaching apparatus. It's difficult to centralize all that data, check it for accuracy, and process it, for example -- let alone feed it back into the system to control everyday life. And China has data from 1.4 billion people to handle.
This is nothing but big government doing what it does best - helping its people. Instead of allowing the people to make their own decisions, it is making the correct decisions for them. And why not? The smartest people run the Chinese government. You can't be any geek off the street and join the Communist Party. You have to be smart and capable, and only the cream rises to the top. Why shouldn't these people be able to run society? I see people on Slashdot all the time bemoaning how stupid people ruin everything. See: Donald Trump voters. Things would be SO much better if we smart people just had to power to change things.
Isn't eliminating negative outcomes and ensuring positive outcomes one of the major arguments in favor of big government? This is what China is doing. Oh, it eliminates personal freedom? The personal freedom that Chinese people never had at any point in history? You mean "freedumb". Because people who bitch and moan about freedom all the time are precisely the ones who make such consistently wrong decisions. Why shouldn't the government step in and help them? Isn't that why we established governments in the first place?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I'm a Chinese immigrant and read Chinese news everyday. No where did I find this story mentioned, neither from main land news sites nor overseas ones. Maybe it's a secretive thing, I don't know. But I tend to think it's a money grab kind of project like many others that's not really practical or intended to be. You seem like a person with an open mind, so I'll say this. Take everything you read about China from the western media (including this site) with a grain of salt. It's very very biased. Think about how the media acted during the election. It's on that level and beyond. I'll probably be labelled a "50-cent" in no time, but anyways.