
College Rejection Threat Highlights Social Credit Blacklists - Sami_Lehtinen
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/07/college-rejection-threat-highlights-social-credit-blacklists/
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soccred
Minority View Warning!!

In a small rural village, when one person misbehaves, everyone knows and
punishes the offender with collective actions. That serves as a major
deterrent against bad behaviors. This mechanism is weakened by the size of
community. Reputational information cannot always travel as far as a person
could. The social credit system is a reimplementation of this mechanism from
the old days.

It can be abused the same way. A village peon who angers the powerful become
an outcast regardless of who is in the right.

~~~
tdb7893
A blacklist without context and without the people executing the punishment
knowing the person is pretty different from small communities. It captures
some of the "small" aspect but completely misses the effects of having a
"community".

Also my wife grew up in a small town and how judgemental they were is the main
reason she is glad not to be there anymore so even if we could recreate how
small towns actually work I don't know if we want to.

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rebuilder
Barring someone from getting an education because of their father's debts
seems tremendously short-sighted. Setting aside the issue of being punished
for someone else's offenses, if you start taking away people's life prospects,
it's not hard to see the criminal undervlasses growing in numbers. If the case
described in the article is representative of how this credit system works, it
seems likely to undermine the stability of Chinese society, not bolster it.

~~~
est
If you click through the links after links and read the original article, the
family obviously had a $200,000 loan from a bank and failed to pay at due
time, meanwhile his kids still attend private schools. The case was brought to
a court, and the father was added to the "blacklist".

This story aside, the system is in spotlight because China now have a huge
debt problem.

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nicodjimenez
Sociopaths do exist and a social credit system can be helpful in limiting the
extent of their damage. On the other hand, at what costs?

Some social problems (illegal immigration in the US comes to mind) might not
actually have a practical solution. For such problems, it might be the case
that actually trying to solve the problem is much worse than just living with
it. Kind of like back problems. Light treatment - like physical therapy - can
be really helpful, but the heavy handed approach of surgery can leave you
paralyzed / dealing with extreme pain.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Sociopaths are precisely the sort of people who enjoy success in optimizing
for whatever metrics they're measured by

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modells
Orwellian and insane as fuck. Who decides what is a “credit” and what is a
“debt?” What recourse or due-process do people have to challenge this
evidence-free, glorified thought-policing? Those were rhetorical questions
because this sort of whole social-engineering is totalitarian, ludicrous and
the textbook definition of evil; also look at internet and media censorship,
Xi installing himself as Emperor, lack of property rights and the supposedly
“anti-corruption” campaign. What shred of moral authority can one have when
they install themselves as supreme dictator?

~~~
gooien201807
Exactly. This is horrifying. Another insane situation is the US drone
program's Social Credit Kill List [1],

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate,
> “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be
> triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory
> checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting
> suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone
> “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have
> come to be known as “signature strikes.”

> “When I learned about signature strikes, that was incredible,” Faisal says.
> “If the criteria is being armed or having a beard – that is everyone in
> Yemen.”

Governments need to be more transparent on how social credits are "credited"
and "debited".

1\. [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
features/how-...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-
to-survive-americas-kill-list-699334/)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Thank you for sharing that Rolling Stone link. It is harrowing and absolutely
terrifying, and indeed a clear and irrefutable description of how the U.S. has
already been using a form of algorithmic social credit system for years to
select assassination targets in the middle east. Highly relevant for a thread
like this one duscussing additional (less lethal) types of damage from social
credit systems.

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Animats
China may be on to something. White-collar crime convictions should include
restrictions like that unless and until all losses and fines have been repaid.
You can fly, but only in coach. You can't fly in a private aircraft. You can't
have a credit card above the low-end level. You can't be an officer or
director of a company. You can't play golf on a public course. You have to
file taxes with the standard deduction.

~~~
timavr
But why? They are already getting prison sentence for it.

The problem is that all the punishment is actually cost society money and
productivity. Like telling people that they can’t get education because of
whatever is huge net negative to society.

~~~
yorwba
Based on the article, it appears that the blacklists are used to punish
instances where someone was ordered to pay a fine but didn't comply. I think
in pretty much any western country, that would result in a prison sentence in
itself, but apparently not in China. So those limitations that are put on
blacklisted persons are essentially a half-prison: not complete restriction of
movement, but enough to serve as punishment. From that viewpoint, it might
actually be cheaper to enforce than a prison sentence. It certainly seems to
be preferable to the Chinese authorities who came up with the system.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Whoa there. Not paying a fine in a western country doesn’t necessarily (and
doesn’t often) lead to jail time. Civil penalties are not easily converted
into criminal ones, for obvious reasons (they punish poorer offenders for not
being rich).

~~~
yorwba
I'm most familiar with the situation in Germany [1] where you either have to
pay your fines, prove that you can't pay (in which case the fine is deferred
or split into smaller installments) or get detained in prison for up to six
weeks (or three months for multiple fines).

Of course most people do end up complying in one way or another (which means
that the fine is _eventually_ paid, even if very poor people might need many
small installments).

I'm pretty sure that most other countries will also eventually threaten to
imprison someone if they make no effort to pay a fine, otherwise many people
would simply ignore them and never pay.

[1] [https://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_owig/englisch_ow...](https://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_owig/englisch_owig.html#p0534)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
No, that definitely isn’t true in the USA. I didn’t realize Germany was so
backwards.

They will seize your assets, garnish your wages, but they won’t send you to
jail, how would you even pay then?

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monort
It's exactly the same in US

[https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/09/384968360...](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/09/384968360/jail-
time-for-unpaid-court-fines-and-fees-can-create-cycle-of-poverty)

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sgt101
Very interesting references in this post which give a good perspective on the
blacklist system.

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reversengineer
This story is totally taken out of context. The rejection was from a PRIVATE
university and based on an inability to pay past loans. This is totally within
scope of reasonableness.

