
China Rolls Out 'Social Credit Score' System - contourtrails
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/04/24/china-assigns-every-citizen-a-social-credit-score-to-identify-who-is-and-isnt-trustworthy/amp/
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thisisit
This has been discussed couple of times earlier too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788296)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201926)

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dmoy
My mother in law is already paranoid, warning us not to talk about certain
topics with her. Scary stuff.

I should point out that my MIL is a completely apolitical person who worked in
the Chinese government for her entire career, spending most of that time just
helping poor people, without a shred of corruption. She has nothing to worry
about, doesn't care about politics, and even _she 's_ paranoid about this.

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rqs
Do you know what should be more paranoid? No body in China are publicly
paranoid about it, at least I didn't notice anyone does on domestic websites.

On websites which out of censorship though, is another story, of course.

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aquadrop
Yeah, because you'll get penalty points... One step till 1984.

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shadowtree
Nice thing is you can use this in an offensive manner too.

Japanese forums have been raided by Chinese trolls in the past. Now the
Japanese just post a statement about Tienanmen square and poof, no more
Chinese attendance, as the Great Firewall starts blocking...

Interesting times.

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anvandare
I wonder why the Chinese internet is still even connected to the Internet
(other than for cyber-warfare).

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gooseus
Well, let's not forget that a significant percentage of the "decentralized"
bitcoin mining network, operates out of China[0].

Currently BTC.COM[1] and AntPool[2] combined make up 42.5% of the network and
both are both owned by Bitmain, a company headquartered in Beijing.

ViaBTC[3] is also a Chinese mining company operating out of Shenzhen and has
10.1%. I'm not going to bother checking the rest since that's already 52.6% of
the network controlled by 2 companies under 1 authoritarian regime.

[0] [https://blockchain.info/pools](https://blockchain.info/pools)

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BTC.com](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BTC.com)

[2] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/AntPool](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/AntPool)

[3]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/viabtc](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/viabtc)

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monetus
I wonder why I haven't heard that repeated more often. That is not good.

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LifeLiverTransp
If i where a dictator, i would punnish whoever pitched this as a traitor-
after all- now you are cut off from all true information, you get the perfect
soap opera- no matter how the people feel, until the day the fluffy
thunderclouds around you decide its time for a chain reaction.

How this could seem to anyone in power a good idea- i will never know.

~~~
fortythirteen
Its intended purpose has little to do with monitoring.

This starts Orwellian and end Huxleyan, in that a generation or two in, the
majority of people's _perception will be altered_. They have no access to
dissenting thought and their critical thinking skills are as dull as a
doorknob.

This is about thought control.

~~~
LifeLiverTransp
So many methods where tryied, but when the great cycle of strife comes back
with force, i sincerely doubt that 'social' credits will prevent hunger riots.
Other people cant judge you if you eat them first.

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dmoy
Yea the number of unpublicized civil disobedience (protest, whatever) in China
is pretty staggering. China media doesn't pick up on it for obvious reasons,
Western media I guess is only interested when they can fit it into their
narrative (e.g. 6/4), which isn't the case for relatively uninteresting
protest at random factory or whatever. I mean you see some on Western news,
but it's like 10 strikes/protests a day on average, and we don't see the scale
of it here.

When you see that, it frames a lot of the party's actions and you see why
(maybe you don't agree with it still, whatever). Basically scared shitless of
a mass uprising, and trying to keep enough of the fires out, or at least
mildly smoldering instead of rating.

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trunnell
Is it fair to say this is objectionable mostly due to the government
enforcement of one "score" per person?

After all, we have a "karma score" here on HN and we think it's great... in
part, presumably, because it's opt-in and it doesn't follow you around.

Is there a middle ground? As in, an identity service that offers this kind of
"trustworthiness score" across services but it's opt-in and you can have as
many "identities" as you'd like. You could use a high-trust real-name identity
with certain online accounts like banks but also have the ability to use
throw-away identities for anonymous browsing and commenting? If such an
identity protocol included some kind of cryptographic chain of proof as a way
to validate the trustworthiness, it could be quite useful.

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NedIsakoff
Or it doesn't merely apply to you? If you're score is too low, guess what?
You're kids is not going to be allowed to go to good public schools. Want to
do private instead? They won't let you in unless you're score is good.

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useful
Does anyone believe that this is only for citizens? It wouldn't be that hard
to extend a score for the rest of the world. Your online profile could very
well affect your travel.

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yoz-y
Is there a way to check this score somewhere somehow when outside of China? My
family in-law is Chinese but I just do not hear anything about this from them.

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whatyoucantsay
It will be interesting to see how YC helps with this as their investment and
relationship with China deepens.

(see:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16919952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16919952))

Update: my account has just been throttled and I cannot make further
comments:/

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plussed_reader
I wonder about the after market to identify and target 'low scoring'
individuals.

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josefresco
Reminds me of this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)

Which has a concept of "social score".

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walterbell
Which countries are likely to emulate or avoid this type of system?

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read_if_gay_
Given enough time and depending on how this works out I don't think it is an
impossibility that this will eventually be implemented in western countries.

One might object that no sane people would allow this, but we're already
allowing mass surveillance. After 9/11 we allowed legislation that is
basically one massive infringement of privacy. All it'd take is gradual
implementation and some kind of "starter event".

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goates
Someone already came up with a Yelp for people app, called Peeple. Thankfully
the backlash made it pretty clear there was little, if any, support for the
concept.

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jakeogh
Now just add in some "basic income" and...

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eveningcoffee
Chinas NEP is over.

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zwaps
This is just scary.

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thegabez
Sounds straight out of Black Mirror

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manishsharan
Is this really such a bad thing for developing countries ? In India, for
instance , powerful people use twitter to call for rape and murder of their
opponents regularly and politicians justify rape. These are just a small
minority of people -- however they are extra-ordinarily vocal and their "free
speech" scares all the decent people.

Of course , Social Credit score has no place in western liberal democracies
but maybe Social Credit score is not a bad idea for developing countries where
ignorant people outnumber educated people ,where depraved medieval traditions
still hold sway.

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pradn
The potential for abuse of a "social score" system seems even higher in
countries without strong liberal-democratic traditions or an educated voting
population. Politicians in India already abuse their oversight of the police
to sidestep the legal system. (The classic case of the "son of the MLA" who
commits a crime and gets acquitted because of his father's political power.)
It would be easy enough to reduce the social scores for opponents or critics
of the politicians in power. Hell, there have been arrests in India based on
Facebook posts. Not to mention virtual mobs threatening vocal citizens on
Twitter. At least these instances are visible. Someone could silently add some
bogus stuff to your "social score" file, just like credit reports can contain
false information. A "social score" system would just replicate corruption and
illiberality on a large scale. From the perspective of those in power, it
would be a good way to control people.

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manishsharan
You do make a very good point about the potential for abuse. My vision for
this would be be a dispassionate system -- driven by AI and untouched by
politics-- that could create/assign the social score. A model could be created
by the science community with inputs from the legal system.

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pradn
Technology just encodes the ethics of the creator, so we can't hope for
apolitical technology.

