
China’s experiment in ranking and monitoring citizens has started - italophil
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/
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dqpb
I understand the inclination to do this - I think it's natural to want to live
in a meritocracy. But I just can't image this not backfiring.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

~~~
hliyan
Perhaps that is a good thing. There is no argument more convincing than a
demonstration. So I'd rather observe this scheme's first failure in China than
elsewhere. The rest of the world can learn a lasting lesson in what not to do.

And if it succeeds, then I'd be glad to be wrong.

~~~
ibeckermayer
This is not an empirical issue. Without knowing any of the outcomes, we can
already say that a government clocking your every move and giving you a rating
based on how favorable the government finds your behavior, all without your
consent, is an utterly obscene moral evil.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Generally when people have to use the word “obscene” it’s because they can’t
make an argument in moral grounds. See: obscenity laws.

But I’d like to here your argument on why this is immoral.

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natch
They can apply this same system to outsiders too as long as they can buy or
gather the data.

They could then use this inside of countries other than China, where they own
increasing numbers of business interests including employers.

So this will start affecting behaviors even of non-Chinese people as people
anticipate their behavior getting put into the system at some date in the
future. Even if the system isn’t in place here yet.

It’s like a preview version of the immortal dictator Elon Musk talks about in
the new “Do You Trust This Computer” movie.

~~~
rgbrenner
Good point. At some point WeChat, Weibo, et al will want to expand outside of
China, and they could apply this system to everyone who uses those platforms.

Just imagine, your social media profile on WeChat, your messages on Weibo,
your searches on Baidu, your images on Meipai could all feed into your score.
Maybe Momo could display and sort dating matches by their score so you don't
end up with someone who's undesirable.

Sounds terrible.

~~~
natch
Your sarcasm aside, the problem is the definition of "undesirable" is
controlled by a central authority which regards criticism and association with
other free thinking people to be undesirable behaviors.

~~~
rgbrenner
There was no sarcasm in my post. All of those companies really do intend to
compete internationally one day. They might have some difficulty in the US,
but there are plenty of countries that would be open to using their services.
And theres no reason they cant apply social scores to their international
users.

Edit: was it the part about momo that makes you think sarcasm? It wasnt.. if
the chinese are ok with this scoring and see it as useful (or its important
because it limits your career path, for example), I can see private companies
building it into their apps to extend it... using it for dating, apartments,
loans, etc. There's no reason a tool like this would be limited to government
only uses if the people approve.

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westiseast
> Yang, who asked that her real name not be used, ... has no privacy-related
> concerns. “I trust the government,” she says. “Who else can you trust if not
> them?”

Irony obviously not her strong point.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Chinese get irony and are smart about being subversive under cover, this was
probably intentional.

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lumberjack
Sounds like in part, it is trying to replace the lost moral compass of Chinese
society. But centralising moral authority was always a bad idea.

~~~
robotkdick
I recently re-read 1984 by Orwell and it's frightening how much of the fiction
is becoming reality in places like China.

Absolute power lying with one leader interminably has never worked well with
results in ranging from subversion of new or different ideas, civil war,
assassinations, mass killings, world war...

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dalbasal
We in "the west" or whatnot need to watch out for the corporate equivalents of
this, including credit scores, particularly coming from the financial sectors.

There's just a lot of opportunities these days, with all the data floating
around and our increasing ability to calculate probabilities of arbitrary
things about people from large enough datasets.

One side of this is disadvantage. Credit scores are an attempt to rank people
by probability of default. A modern version of a credit scores would be even
more black box. There are serious problems of fairness with this. You can
probably calculate some usable credit score based on where you were born and
to who.

Another side of such scores is the punitive side. This will affect your credit
score, so stay inline. Essentially it's a lightweight proprietary justice
system.

Insurance generally works in a similar way. Rental markets can too, and agents
will aggregate blacklists which can then be used punitively. Policing is now
using a lot more statistical techniques. Employers would probably like a
commercial version of the systems police use.

Treating people as statistical objects in this way... Its dehumanising, it's
discriminatory and it isn't rule of law.

~~~
crusso
Is it dehumanizing when I decline a ride with an Uber driver that has 3 stars?

~~~
dalbasal
Not necessarily, but such things can be.

Say I have a FB-based profiling system that will calculate the star rating
alternative. It works slightly better than uber's current rating system. Ie,
it's a better measure of how much you will like the driver. It also works
before the driver takes his first fare. In fact, uber's minimum star rating
policy can be used as a hiring/sign-up filter.

Would you consider such a thing dehumanising? Its essentially how insurance
works, and is increasingly becoming a viable business MO.

~~~
crusso
Reputation systems increase our ability to trust people, products, and systems
in general. It seems like our logical concern should be whether or not such
systems are accurate.

The flip side of all this is that betrayal of trust is also dehumanizing. When
you pay to get an Uber ride and you're taken to the wrong place or ripped off,
that's dehumanizing. When you loan someone money and they don't pay you back,
that's dehumanizing. When you send someone a product from an E-Bay auction and
their payment turned out to be a scam, that's dehumanizing.

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viraptor
There's an interesting video from Extra Credits about this. It's based on
early announcements and repeats some of the popular points, but it addresses
the gamification and social pressure side of the issue which I haven't seen
discussed that much elsewhere. I recommend watching:
[https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI](https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI)

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intopieces
Any word on weather foreigners will be ranked too? What about Chinese living
abroad? I have lots of Chinese coworkers who sometimes get stuck in China when
their visas get checked. I wonder if this will cause that to happen more often
- I imagine that living abroad isn’t good for your score.

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rdlecler1
I’m for enlightened meritocracy, but I highly doubt that a centralized
government initiative is going to get the score right on a multi-variate
analysis (and will probably miss some important variables). This sounds quite
chilling. It’ll only be a matter of time before this extends beyond China’s
boarders to citizens in other countries. Will China limit your right to travel
or do business by putting pressure on smaller governments?

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gumby
This feels like a modern day version of the PRC system where each residential
block had a concierge (spy) who would spy on and denounce residents, and a
group discussion session about behavior. Sorry, it’s been so many years that I
can’t remember what this was called

~~~
anontoday0406
Neighborhood Watch?

~~~
gumby
I don’t remember the English term for it nor could I speak Chinese at the
time. I read about it in the 80s. I believe it was supposed to be a regular
and mandatory communal activity and persisted after the rest of the cultural
revolution petered out. Drat, failing memory

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pyraz
I think I saw this Black Mirror episode.

~~~
anontoday0406
I think I experienced it on HN and Reddit ;)

I would add that the difference is that in Black Mirror, it was other people
that are giving you up/down-votes. Here, it's the government.

I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.

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thiagoharry
Isn't money a form of ranking in our society in this style?

~~~
Ajedi32
If money were doled out exclusively by the government, perhaps.

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tambre
Of course the Citizen's Office for this incredibly modern community still uses
Windows XP (and Windows 7).

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spookyuser
Didn't Xi Jinping watch the Simpsons episode where they installed cameras all
over Springfield?

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wynemo
it's harder and harder to live in china now.

~~~
acct1771
Please elaborate?

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neeleshs
Let the games begin!

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niccccccccc
> The West has social credit scoring: money

??? as opposed to China which has no money??

China's credit system is paired with dictatorship, censorship, disappearance,
and killing. Nowhere near the similarities with West

Young Chinese activist missing after sharing plan to wear ‘Xitler’ t-shirt in
public

[https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/03/young-chinese-
activist...](https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/03/young-chinese-activist-
missing-after-sharing-plan-to-wear-xitler-t-shirt-on-cpc-anniversary-report/)

~~~
chrischen
China is not a dictatorship. It is a single party representative government
system that does not directly elect as many officials as the US does. However
even in the US most officials are not directly elected (including the
president) and people are still limited to two parties. Consider the last US
election, Donald Trump lost the popular direct election, but was still elected
by president by the Electoral college (a separate body chosen by the 2
dominant political parties for electing the president).

Guantanamo bay is not run by the Chinese. While they generally do not imprison
US citizens, they definitely do not give a shit about human rights for other
people.

~~~
bad_good_guy
China is a dictatorship. Don't delude yourself.

~~~
chrischen
It's a one-party regime, and that has its downsides, but it's not the same as
a dictatorship. Just because it's not as Democractic as the US does not make
it a dictatorship.

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niccccccccc
There's alot of international people posting on hacker news, and alot of them
have anti-US bias. They wish China would be the one that takes over US as the
superpower of the world. for those people I have a comment

You like posting political views on the internet right? Imagine China is the
sole superpower of the world that defeated the democracies of the world. You
would be ranked, censored, monitored, caught, jailed, tortured, and killed.

~~~
throwafk81
I’m European. I can be fined and/or incarcerated if what I say on the internet
is arbitrarily deemed as “hate speech”. You don’t need to live in China to be
censored.

~~~
solarkraft
I'm European. I'm glad there's an attempt to protect vulnerable groups.

~~~
acct1771
"The Holocaust" isn't a vulnerable group.

------
bitL
How much time does China left? 10? 20? 40 years? before becoming utterly
uncompetitive?

~~~
mistermann
Yes, you can see them growing weaker every day can't you, as they fall further
and further behind the US.

~~~
bitL
I meant they will get stuck with whatever paradigm works for them right now.
So they might have some nice decade, then hit a plateau, then decline, like
always when they followed their "safe philosophy" in the past (look at e.g.
Qing dynasty).

~~~
mistermann
So basically, same as any other country.

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cdmckay
So basically they want to take the private credit system and make it public
and accountable. What’s wrong with this, exactly?

~~~
ashleyn
Public services, especially those run by China, don't exactly have a stellar
record of being uncorrupt and accountable. What if the system is abused to
shut down a competitor on the surreptitious "donation" of another company?
What if being LGBT or the wrong religion is made demerit-worthy?

It would bother me a lot less if it were private and governed private services
only. There's more accountability in the sense that, there will always be
services available that don't require the credit system, and there will be
multiple competing bureaus ala the current credit system.

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anontoday0406
I'm not sure if irony is the correct word here, but I do find it funny how the
"unpopular" comments in this thread have been faded to gray.

~~~
mistermann
I was just thinking about the increasingly heavy self-censorship we live under
in the West after reading all of these fear mongering comments. Irony is very
appropriate.

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jimmytidey
Commentary on China's social credit system so often fails to note the many
parallels in western societies.

* The West has social credit scoring: money. A key principle of market economies is that accruing money is the just reward for contributing to society. Your bank account is your social credit score - yet we all know that many people get rich without rendering a useful service to society.

* Intelligence agencies keep security risk scores for every citizen. Just like China's policy decisions, there is almost no democratic oversight over how security services assign these scores.

* Credit ratings profoundly influence your life, for example, where you live depends on your ability on the mortgage a bank will offer you. These scores have almost no democratic oversight, just like China's policy decisions.

China is being radically transparent with its social credit system when
compared with the West's unacknowledged or under-scrutinised scoring systems.

~~~
jknoepfler
Each of these bullet points is either false or meaningless, which is
frustrating because I sort of want to agree with your main point, but I just
can't when it's phrased like this.

China obviously utilizes currency and a (very) limited free market. There has
never been an alignment between wealth and social value, nor should there be.
Yes, wealth creates inequality in the United States (in particular) and other
more free-market oriented countries. Some of those countries (particularly
Scandinavian ones) have taken great pains to see that actual suffering due to
wealth inequality is minimized. The United States is culturally behind in this
regard, but equating wealth with an explicit citizenship score is absurd.

Intelligence agencies do not keep security risk scores for every citizen (what
country are you talking about, anyway?). I would wager at 10:1 odds that I
don't have a profile at the FBI, CIA, or NSA in the United States (to be
concrete). Even if they did (they don't) there are no legal uses of such a
score, and any attempt to institutionalize something like that would have
people rioting in the streets (literally). If I wanted to discover whether or
not I had a "score" I would file a FOIA claim for each of those institutions.

Credit ratings are heavily regulated in the United States. Not as well as they
could be, but see the Fair Credit Reporting Act from 1970 for a start. Credit
reporting agencies are required to be transparent about the sources of their
decisions, and hopefully we'll continue to make the system more predictable
and humane. The uses of credit ratings are generally limited to situations
where having a history of default is important information to a lender or
renter. The colleges you applied to didn't, and won't, use your credit score.

Please try to communicate using specifics.

~~~
jimmytidey
"China obviously utilizes currency" \- I didn't mean to imply that China
doesn't have money, obviously it does, and it functions as a social scoring
system there too.

"do not keep security risk scores" \- As other commenters point out,
intelligence agencies use methods like cotraveller analysis and social network
analysis which do seem to imply scoring all citizens. I guess they have an
interpretation of the law which allows this.

You should FOIA the NSA and then we can find out for sure.

"Credit ratings are heavily regulated in the United States." \- Credit ratings
in the UK are notoriously opaque, if you believe a mistake has been made there
is very little you can do. I don't know about the US.

~~~
jimmytidey
Man, people hate this comment!

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mark_l_watson
Although this new scheme has the potential for punishing dissidents, I oddly
don't find it too bothersome. Five years ago this idea would have seriously
creeped me out. What has changed? To some degree I feel numbed and
desensitized by my own government (USA) with TSA searching laptops and social
media at borders, near total special interest control of "news" media, and the
general feeling that now more than in the past the rich and powerful can just
about get away with whatever they want.

EDIT: sorry, I didn’t express myself very well: I don’t approve of the
proposed system in China, but given what is happening in the USA I don;t feel
like criticizing other countries.

~~~
ashleyn
If you think the rich and powerful won't pay someone to mark up their score, I
have bad news for you. This is not a solution to that.

~~~
dqpb
The article says you can earn points by donating to charity. So there is at
least one provision for the rich to buy a better score.

