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Chinese Journalist Banned From Flying, Buying Property Due To 'Social Credit Score' (cbslocal.com)
schwit1 shares a report from CBS Local: China is rolling out a high-tech plan to give all of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score, based on how they behave. But there are consequences if a score gets too low, and for some that's cause for concern. When Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of untrustworthy people. Liu is a journalist who was ordered by a court to apologize for a series of tweets he wrote and was then told his apology was insincere. "I can't buy property. My child can't go to a private school," he said. "You feel you're being controlled by the list all the time." And the list is now getting longer as every Chinese citizen is being assigned a social credit score -- a fluctuating rating based on a range of behaviors. It's believed that community service and buying Chinese-made products can raise your score. Fraud, tax evasion and smoking in non-smoking areas can drop it.
Wow, who knew!
The Big Brother is raising his younger siblings right. Apologize or go to bed without dinner. What a great prospect for the future. It always starts with 'bad' people and before you know it you are labeled a terrorist for expressing your opinion.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Perplexing system.. Tweeting gets you grounded and homeless.. Killing +100 million people makes you the leader..
We have "demerit" points on our drivers license here in Ontario. As long as the system is transparent (you broke this law, -25 points, you paid your tax on time, +2 points, etc.) then it's not so bad. Post the account history publicly for each person. However, if the algorithm is a secret, that's a really big problem. You know all the Supreme Leader's buddies are going to have padded scores, right...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Whatever abuse can happen, WILL HAPPEN. If you give power to the state then it's guaranteed someone will come and use it in the worst ways imaginable.
Socialist dream (tm).
It IS a good idea, I've been advocating it for ages.
I wouldn't use it to ban you from flying though. I'd only use it to affect your right to vote, to claim social benefits (government money), etc.
You want anything back from society? Stop being antisocial!
Lose your right to vote for disagreeing with the government???
Yeah.. No!!!
It IS a good idea, I've been advocating it for ages.
I wouldn't use it to ban you from flying though.
*You* wouldn't use it at all. You would be used by it, at the whims of whoever would control it.
Considering this and things like it have been talked about way before that show was made it's less the Chinese looking at a fictional dystopia for ideas to implement and more just the writers of a fictional dystopia hearing about Chinese plans and adding it to their fictional dystopia.
It's a horrifying idea none the less and only made even more horrifying by now having been implemented in the worst way possible in real life. Then again considering all the outrageous ways China has tried to control it's population over the decades in an effort to stop them from realizing the absurdity of their one party system this is probably business as usual from their perspective. If you can get thrown into some local Stasi equivalent's jail with nothing resembling a trial and coerced into confessing to all kinds of crazy things just for running a bookstore that sells books critical of the ruling party and system this may not even register for a lot people.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
First off, the points on your license are only lost because of traffic offenses. You don't lose points for tweeting doubleplusungood opinions or shoplifting. And in some countries you only lose points for serious and dangerous traffic violations, not for doing 90 in an 80 zone. Meaning that a string of little offenses does not escalate into seriousy heavy punishment when some arbitrary threshold is crossed
Second, the points (and accompanying fine) are issued administratively, but in most (or all?) countries in Europe you do have the right to go to court if you think there has been a mistake.
Thirdly, if you lose your points you are banned from driving, not from flying or from buying property.
All this honours the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. The Chinese system on the other hand lets a number of small transgressions turn into a life ruining event. And since it bans you from a large number of activitites that are completely unrelated to each other or to the crime, this smells of cruel and unusual punishment and double jeopardy.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The thing about planning any far reaching system is that you need to consider what the damage that can be done if people with less-than-noble intentions take control of the system and use it to further their own goals. It's not just the danger conservatives imposing their ideas on how you're supposed to live your life and think taking over the system, there's also their opposite numbers on the extreme who are particularly keen on trying to prevent people from having opinions that differ from their orthodoxy. If implemented as something run by the government this system is particularly vulnerable to politicians coming in and changing what's rewarded and what's punished to fit their goals.
If I had to come up with a name for this, it would be the "Monkey with a machine gun"-principle as I think that explains the idea itself pretty well.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
So, you could, for instance, invest in some local firm or support some party member.
So at least a solution for rich people exists. Whew. For a moment I was worried the law would apply to them for a change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Teddy Kennedy leaving a woman to die ... Donald Trump's alleged sexual harassment... Bill Clinton's alleged rapes..."
Why does this site have these throwaway politically charged comments modded up these days?
The problem is in the definition of "misbehave". Because even the examples you give send shivers up my spine. And we didn't even touch the usual "praise dear leader and love The Party" bits that will almost certainly make it into the fold.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If by throwaway you mean 100% ontopic and relevant and historical then it's because that is how we predict the future, by past experience! Of course not all of us, some of us are more pie in the sky type of ppl. Do you know the definition of insanity ?
ie. All the stuff that would rate you as an "asshole".
All the stuff that would rate you as an 'asshole' today. Unfortunately, once such a system is in place it becomes very easy to use it to disenfranchise people who disagree with either the current leaders or the whoever is currently best at propaganda. How do you think the racial equality movement in the US in the '60s would have done if anyone involved in antisocial actions had lost the right to vote?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That sounds well and good until you realize that being "anti-social" won't stop society from taking from the people it deems anti-social. I think you'll also find that anti-social is quite open to interpretation and that the worst people will gladly shape it into some awful tyranny. Imagine what the white nationalists might deem as anti-social, and hopefully that gives you enough pause to rethink your idea.
It could possibly be a good idea in theory, but only in theory. Every one of those things you listed has edge cases and/or difference of opinion. Who decides what harassment is? At 2 am even the tiniest sound can wake people who are light sleepers. I'm not into sports at all, but what if I buy a TV on superbowl weekend because of the sales but discover it has some serious usability bugs that could never be observed in a store display?
But most important of all I think is the opportunity for abuse. Have a Hillary (or Trump) sticker on your car? Look at that, your tail light is out. Hey, you just did 1mph over the limit. Your bumper went an inch over the stop line at the red light. But swap one sticker for the other and you could see the cops looking the other way for a 10mph-over infraction. You already have police displaying that sort of discriminatory discretion, but when even more is on the line...the opportunity to remove your political opponents from the voting pool...you can expect it to be much worse.
It is not a social credit score. Social implies that it is somehow derived from how other people perceive you, where each person can have a greatly different view of you. It also implies that everyone is free to use, or not use, these scores as they see fit.
Neither is the case, there is nothing social about it. It is a mandatory government conformance and compliance score. It is an instrument of oppression.
It IS a good idea, I've been advocating it for ages.
Yeah, well your advocacy is deemed antisocial, so your score just went off a cliff. No school for your kids!!!
The trouble with advocating authoritarianism the way you do is that it will *always* be used against you. How fast would we have had legalised gay marriages if we were keeping an antisocial scorecard? How long would it have taken to strike-down Jim Crow laws if everyone was kept in check via a non-court scorecard?
Besides, you want these things implemented? Sure. How about I get your score into negative territory by complaining that your music was loud at 2am, or that you were smoking in a no-smoking area, or that you I saw you littering? With no due process how are you going to defend yourself when it's my word against your word?
Take it to court? Sorry. Your advocacy was for bypassing the courts when issuing penalties.
See, the thing is you think your shit don't stink, so these penalties would never apply to you, but the thing your advocating for (bypassing due process) can be used against you by anyone, not just those in power.
You go ahead and get this implemented, but don't cry foul when you get penalised for blaring music at 2am even though you did no such thing. When you bypass due process, you bypass it for everyone, including yourself.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
It is a tool that can be abused for corruption. Score too low? Pay off the right people or threaten them to change your score.
The problem with this solution is that you get a society that stagnates and ossifies. It's a simple solution for a complex problem that causes more problems in the end.
Anyone fighting for social change would be labeled as antisocial and suddenly their rights are heavily circumscribed.
Those who think this is a good idea is the same type of people who want to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
Yes, there’s the problem of fallibility, so punishment should err on the side of weak punishment because what if the system made the wrong judgment? and there is the problem of downward spirals, where a few small events are exacerbated.
I don’t mind that they want meticulous discipline - but you don’t get that by ruining people in unfair and cruel ways. You get... you get the opposite. The Chinese system is shooting itself in the foot, as people will conclude that they already live in chaos, not order.
I could see a social credit score system easily coming to the United States because the big data miners like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. would drool at the opportunity like that for a new source of revenue. I'll bet even the credit bureaus are watching the experiment in China unfold and are plotting how they could implement a similar system here in the United States.
Ah, do you mean like making smoking/possession of marijuana a criminal offense and then using that as a basis to disenfranchise people from voting, employment, welfare, etc.? No free country would ever do something like that, would it?
It IS a good idea, I've been advocating it for ages.
I wouldn't use it to ban you from flying though. I'd only use it to affect your right to vote, to claim social benefits (government money), etc.
You want anything back from society? Stop being antisocial!
It's always nice to see the mask fall off the leftist lunatic.
Do you have ESP?
You sound like a raging control freak. You know, like the kind of insane asshole who rages against small supposed infractions and lets it fester to the point he rents a truck and mows down bystanders just to show them who's boss. Maybe you should be prevented from driving any motor vehicles. Just to be safe.
The thing about planning any far reaching system is that you need to consider what the damage that can be done if people with less-than-noble intentions take control of the system and use it to further their own goals
That's the beauty of the Chinese system, Xi is already emperor for life. So that little problem was already sorted out first :)