Slashdot Mirror
China Bans 23 Million From Buying Travel Tickets as Part of 'Social Credit' System (theguardian.com)
China blocked 23 million "discredited" travelers from buying plane or train tickets last year as part of the country's controversial "social credit" system aimed at improving the behavior of citizens. From a report: According to the National Public Credit Information Centre's 2018 report, 17.5 million people were banned from buying flights and 5.5 million barred from purchasing high-speed train tickets because of social credit offences. The report released last week said: "Once discredited, limited everywhere." The social credit system aims to incentivize "trustworthy" behavior through penalties as well as rewards. According to a government document about the system dating from 2014, the aim is to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." Social credit offenses range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs.
That's what this bullshit sounds like: a bad parent, who never forgets anything bad their kid did, continually reminds them, and always suspects them before anyone else when something bad happens, always believes the so-called 'good kid'. 'Guilty until proven innocent'. You may as well just kill these people, it would be less cruel.
"allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."
Discredited here includes voicing an opinion against the prevailing totalitarian regime or someone in power. Can you say dystopian.
It's coming here right now. Just look at the deplatforming being done by Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Patreon.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
... people who break the law or don't pay dept are low value and, depending, denied employment, guns, voting rights, incarcerated, evicted, fined, denied credit, denied loans ...
The approach is certainly newsworthy but the outcome is similar.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm absolutely certain this system comes with the all the due process checks and balances necessary to ensure it's not abused by the wealthy and connected to punish those they disagree with.
In fact I'm absolutely sure it come with absolutely no due process whatsoever. Kinda like Guantanamo or the no fly list. This is one those tools the Chinese will use to abuse people who don't fall in line with the communist party or dare criticize the leadership.
There's a huge difference between organizations enforcing their own rules and the government running a system to disenfranchise people.
Sounds like nazi germany how long before camps for people of groups like Falun Gong and others are put in them?
China must have tremendous confidence in its ability to suppress people to create common cause for 23 million people to hate the system. That big a number must contain a lot of capable people - and no doubt a bunch of mistakes. All of those now have a clear and undeniable focus for their rage and rebellion.
This sounds like a program likely to have unexpected results
1. There is no concept in modern America of "did the time, paid for the crime" with regard to social attitudes and how ex-felons can be treated.
2. Say something "offensive" in public and watch a wild-eyed mob that makes a witch-burning look tame come after and try to make sure there is "no place in society" for you.
3. Now corporations are getting in on the act with Chase locking accounts because the person was a Badthinker(tm).
Google has been using this model for YouTube for over a year now. Twitter and Facebook too. Blacklists are back around the world as a way to exercise power.
They're literally putting Uighurs in reeducation camps right now.
You're either being sarcastic or overlooking the current Muslim detention camps:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china-forced-labor-camps-uighurs.html
Normally I'm all for bashing China, but
Social credit offenses range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs.
Seeing how we use actual prison for #1 and #3, and are working on it for #2, maybe they aren't as harsh as they sound with this ...
Coming to a western democracy near you soon.
The San Francisco Tech Oligopoly are doing their best. Fortunately, they aren't backed by the rule of law (yet) and in the US new alternatives are gradually emerging to allow uncensored political discussion online.
It's a much worse situation in e.g. the UK, where it's now illegal to offend people, and blasphemy laws are routinely enforced (under the label of hate speech). But the UK hasn't fallen off the cliff yet. There was discussion in parliament a while back during the riots about removing benefits for people identified as rioters (most of whom have no practical means of legal survival except a government check). But the discussion didn't go anywhere, and sanity prevailed for now. Still prety close to that cliff edge though.
It's not at all clear that a society can ever recover from a panopticon totalitarianism.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
China is fast approaching the level of control that Orwell's 1984 describes. We're close to one security camera per citizen. Add total control of Internet, be it fixed or mobile, by the state, as well as total control of social media and payment, and you already have a system that is virtually impossible to escape from.
I am not fucking putting foot in the Peple's Republic of China. It jsut isn't happening.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Maybe China would be better off following Singapore's example. Transgressions like those described are punished by flogging.
You argue that the companies control the government, but then say it's good that the same companies censor people you dislike, because it's not the government doing it. Your hypocrisy is rich.
Well America does it privately. Credit bureaus to keep track of if you didn't pay back loans, lists of people who were arrested along with a culture of not hiring someone if previously arrested, as you must be a bad person if ever arrested and a really bad person if found or forced to plead guilty. As it is a private decision not to hire, rent housing etc it's considered fine.
Government also gets involved with lists of people not allowed to fly, lists of people not allowed to live in certain places, lists of people not allowed to own firearms and even lists of people not allowed to vote.
These lists usually make sense at first look, eg not allowing sex offenders to live by kids, until you look at all the reasons the government will put you on the sex offenders list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
We already have it.
When someone has committed a felony or has been arrested (even if innocent) the action is on the record, making it harder for people to get jobs, apply for loans, and do things in general to help them improve their lives.
For a lot of criminals, they don't do crime because they want to be a bad person, they do it because they cannot see any better alternatives. Then if they get caught, and once they leave jail, even more better alternatives are now off the table.
As bad as that is, it impacts far fewer people than what China does; although, it's probably inevitable that we're sliding down the same path in the US unless some sort of regulation on how private data is shared.
Over here it might not be so much a government sponsored score; but one maintained by private companies.
AI identifies a tattoo on one guy on his facebook photo. Because on average the average person without tattoos probably does less jail time than the person with tattoos- he drops 40 points in his score (despite being law-abiding). His Amazon account shows he has bought a t-shirt with "it's 4:20 somewhere" written on it. He drops another 40 points. Wal-mart reports he bought a lot of beer in the last month (he threw a party)- he drops another 20 points. He goes to buy a plane ticket from Delta but the flights are all booked and so he is put on wait list.
A seat opens up, but a clean shaven guy who buys self-help books and metrosexual skin creams gets the seat instead; Delta could have given it to either guy but determines that the metrosexual is less likely to cause damage and cause a scene because he has a higher civic score.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There's a huge difference between organizations enforcing their own rules and the government running a system to disenfranchise people.
However when no alternative exists in either system then the net result is the same - disenfranchised people. And disenfranchised people who have no outlet will get more extreme.
No. Just no. Nothing of the sort has been proposed.
Not on a government level but Facebook has been trying to share data with your bank account. All sorts of other private companies share data about you between themselves. We already have the first steps in place for a privately run civic score.
Why do you think Facebook wants your bank account information? It's so that they can place ads to people based on the money they have. "Check Into Cash" for poor people and "Apple Watches" for rich people.
Why do you think the Bank wants your Facebook information? You can learn a lot about a person by what they post to Facebook.
We've already got our foot in the door to a private version of what the Chinese government has started. What we need is for laws that make it harder for private companies to share data about you.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's 1.66% of China's population. Pointing out that 23 million is a large percentage of the USA population is an absurd attempt at disinformation.
For an equivalent group in the USA, we might look at people whose right to vote (and to hold a lot of jobs) has been revoked due to a previous felony conviction. As of 2016, 2.5% of the USA's voting age population was barred from voting due to a felony -- if you spread that out over the full population, it'd be just a little more than than China's socially discredited group. Considering China imprisons far fewer people, social credit may be seen as an alternative punishment for that population.
(Of course, the entire Chinese population lacks the right to meaningful voting.)
This space intentionally left blank
America has never claimed to be a democracy. Always a republic.
On the other hand China is much more of a totalitarian state.
No freedom of speech.
Pretend freedom of religion, that is something more like freedom of declared creed, so long is you are ok with punishment for your declaration.
No freedom of expression, No freedom to choose your own career or life.
Can someone from China Please explain why the communist have been allowed to stay it power so long.
( is it simply that they are very efficient and killing and dispersing dissenters?)
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Black Mirror - Season 3 Ep 1 - Nosedive
I can see it happening.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
It is a very bad idea to hire criminals to work for you. It's not some horrible US culture. If it's such a wrong, why don't YOU hire some criminals to work for you? Oh, you won't be doing that? But the rest of us have to expose ourselves to unnecessary risk just so you can feel better about yourself. Gotcha.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Also a good way to convince the bad ones that they might as well *really* be bad because, heck, they've got nothing to lose.
I wonder about this also; if you are in a deep enough hole you may as well keep digging and see if you can reach the other side.
It cannot be good fo society as a whole to bottle up people's movements like this, forcing someone to stay in an area and get angrier and angrier about it... sounds like a really bad idea.
In a way we should all thank the Chinese for going so flat-out on this idea, because a lot of governments are agitating to do similar things but if the Chinese system runs into major issues it will prevent other governments from trying. On the other hand if they iron out the problems by force, and the system appears to work - it could be more likely to spread. :-(
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
4. Political inertia: the majority alive today in China have little/no experience of a working democratic republic. They are used to a totalitarian dictatorship. One doesn't miss what one's never had (and what the de facto gov't there makes sure one knows little about).
China has also basically been an imperial or totalitarian state for thousands of years. One shouldn't underestimate that level of ingraining acceptance of that government style in the culture.
That level of ingraining would not just be in the culture. Survival would favor those who are more passive and genetic selection would occur. Epigenetics would play a part too when traumas endured by parents are strong enough to turn on survival mechanisms whose activation is passed on to their children.