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China’s experiment in ranking and monitoring citizens has started
- anontoday0406 8y agoI'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 8y agoI 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.
- niccccccccc 8y agoBoth of you (thank GOD you both are minorities) seem to like dictators and censorship. Please move to Russia or China or North Korea.
- mistermann 8y agoWhy do you hold the belief that I like dictatorships? How did your mind form that idea, and then assign a high certainty score to it?
- mark_l_watson 8y agoAlthough 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 8y agoIf 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 8y agoThe 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.
- ghostcluster 8y agoIf you consider being born into a well-connected Han family with close ties to the CCP 'a meritocracy' China's problem with bribing officials like police officers and doctors just to get nominal service is so bad that Xi is making a display of curbing it, but I'm not sure their society and political system is structured in a way that can really prevent it. Nobody is accountable to the public outside of the party's inner hierarchy. And the way they've described this system: it will ban citizens who 'violate norms' from using high speed rail, traveling by air, and renting apartments in the major cities.
- sh4z 8y agoI agree. I'd rather have a public system (albeit it might be flawed) than have private companies (facebook, google?) and the likes of TSA and CIA working, possibly together, doing pretty much the same thing
- cdmckay 8y agoSo basically they want to take the private credit system and make it public and accountable. What’s wrong with this, exactly?
- ashleyn 8y agoPublic 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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- coldtea 8y agoThe presence of a credit system to begin with, with puts people in the mercy of corporation (private) or the bureaucracy (public neither in China nor in most of the world, perhaps with the exception of Switzerland, means "directly controlled by the people").
- viraptor 8y agoThe private system, even as bad as it is now, has to reasonably correlate with credit risk to some degree, otherwise companies wouldn't use it (or would use the competitor). A single, gov-enforced system has no limits like that. If they want to give you fewer points because you're not aligned enough with the party line, you get fewer points, and you're more marginalised now. There are no big customers to say "don't want to use this, it doesn't provide me any benefits", because those companies want to be able to continue operating. (Before anyone mentions it: Yes, I know that at the moment only well defined and documented cases are counted. It's not like China would change the rules to, for example, lower the score for liking Falun Gong or other ideas, right?...)
- dqpb 8y agoI 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.
- denzil_correa 8y ago> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy It’s fallacious to think that meritocracy is a function of ONLY the present.
- DataWorker 8y agoNothing is a function of only the present. Your point has no meaning.
- richmarr 8y agoCan you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring? Brooker tackled this kind of thing in Black Mirror, and while his vision of it was pretty bleak, it actually seemed a lot more open to social mobility than our current system in which inequality is becoming more deeply entrenched. Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund. The Black Mirror version of this system would be deeply affected by attractiveness, for example, which would be one possible failing, but there's no indication that the Chinese version is as susceptible to that.
- free652 8y ago>Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund. LOL. Doesn't matter what the system is - the people with power will always find a way around it. USSR - check, China - check.
- nothrabannosir 8y agoSocial mobility at the cost of honest expression of personal beliefs, though. Essentially, lack of personal freedom through rigorous self-censorship. In that episode, Nosedive, the higher up you got, the more "fake" it got. The lower you got, the more "real". Culminating with the archteypical "likeable truck lady". Loss of freedom, no matter if through oppression or through more insiduous means like reverse psychology, is a very heavy price to pay.
- lumberjack 8y agoSounds like in part, it is trying to replace the lost moral compass of Chinese society. But centralising moral authority was always a bad idea.
- _jal 8y agoConfusing legal enforcement with morality is the root of a lot of the ethical rot we see in many places.
- robotkdick 8y agoI 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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- bitL 8y agoHow much time does China left? 10? 20? 40 years? before becoming utterly uncompetitive?
- mistermann 8y agoYes, you can see them growing weaker every day can't you, as they fall further and further behind the US.
- bitL 8y agoI 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 8y agoSo basically, same as any other country.
- niccccccccc 8y agoThere'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.
- jackvalentine 8y ago> They wish China would be the one that takes over US as the superpower of the world. I have literally never seen this.
- meri_dian 8y agoI see China envy online a lot, especially given our recent political disfunction as people look at the superficial stability of China and want that for their own societies.
- whatshisface 8y agoChina is emphatically not stable. The PRC was started in 1949. The US civil war ended in 1865. Revolution is a living memory for some in China and that does a great deal to help the population think that suppression at all costs is reasonable. While the US was having its civil war, China was suffering through the tail end of [1]. Historically (in the modern era), China may best be seen as a very violent place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan (Edit: I didn't notice the word superficial at first, it may have been inserted later as a correction.)
- dnoeuirc4334nt 8y agoThey said "superficial stability". The point is that it looks nice and stable if you don't look too closely.
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- tambre 8y agoOf course the Citizen's Office for this incredibly modern community still uses Windows XP (and Windows 7).
- neeleshs 8y agoLet the games begin!
- pyraz 8y agoI think I saw this Black Mirror episode.
- anontoday0406 8y agoI 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.
- jimmytidey 8y agoCommentary 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.
- psyc 8y agoI agree. Not that the systems are precisely equivalent, of course, but that the devil we're used to is more invisible to us.
- rtx 8y agoThis is like saying, freedom is slavery.
- madengr 8y agoWestern intelligence agencies don’t keep risk scores on everyone. Take off the tin foil hat.
- tankenmate 8y agoThe do now, via full take intelligence efforts. Whatever system they use to analyse and/or filter full take is in effect a ranking system. It is not linear but it is ordered, and sometimes not even individually ordered, and quite often probabilistic and somewhat stochastic, but ordered nonetheless.
- ddorian43 8y agoNSA does, no ? They keep your text/voice, just in case, something comes up.
- niccccccccc 8y ago> 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-missing-after-sharing-plan-to-wear-xitler-t-shirt-on-cpc-anniversary-report/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/03/young-chinese-activist...
- chrischen 8y agoChina 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 8y agoChina is a dictatorship. Don't delude yourself.
- chrischen 8y agoIt'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.
- fermienrico 8y agoRead and watch the video in this article please: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43188739 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43188739
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- rdlecler1 8y agoI’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?
- intopieces 8y agoAny 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.
- wynemo 8y agoit's harder and harder to live in china now.
- acct1771 8y agoPlease elaborate?
- viraptor 8y agoThere'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
- dalbasal 8y agoWe 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 8y agoIs it dehumanizing when I decline a ride with an Uber driver that has 3 stars?
- dalbasal 8y agoNot 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 8y agoReputation 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.
- natch 8y agoThey 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 8y agoGood 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 8y agoYour 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 8y agoThere 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.
- Proven 8y agoMore communist nonsense... They created a dysfunctional society and despite lagging behind all non-communist neighbors, they won’t give up, and now came up with new annoying rules and measures in an attempt to fix the mess they created.
- gumby 8y agoThis 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 8y agoNeighborhood Watch?
- gumby 8y agoI 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
- spookyuser 8y agoDidn't Xi Jinping watch the Simpsons episode where they installed cameras all over Springfield?
- thiagoharry 8y agoIsn't money a form of ranking in our society in this style?
- Ajedi32 8y agoIf money were doled out exclusively by the government, perhaps.
- spaceman1331 8y agoThis is a good reason to demand the American government repeal civil rights laws and anti-racism laws. The American people have every right to deny Chinese people access to American services, American businesses, American networks, American contacts, American financial services, and so on. The Chinese are children who cannot be counted upon to operate a society, they are stupid idiots whose arrogance should not be tolerated. This will bring China and the USA closer to war over ideology, values, freedom, sex. The Chinese government should be punished for this arrogance. The Chinese government should not be allowed to conduct scientific experiments while it engages in this mass dehumanization experiment. The Chinese must choose between dignity and science on the one hand and communism and dehumanization on the other. The Americans should not tolerate such stupid fools. As an American, I have the right to spit on and yell at chinese. I can exercise that right to demoralize and dehumanize pests. I can push chinese into the street where cars will run them over.
- songzme 8y agoI might have missed your satire but Chinese people and the Chinese government are two very different concepts. It is wrong to use one too judge the other.
- westiseast 8y ago> 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 8y agoChinese get irony and are smart about being subversive under cover, this was probably intentional.