Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/16/chinas-citizen-scores-us.html
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online activity, purchases, messages, and social graph
bah - send them to Klendathu with a pea shooter
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“citizen scores”
Coming to the USA soon.
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So Black Mirror S03E01 “Nosedive” exists in real life. This goes well beyond unsettling.
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Black Mirror - Nosedive - has come true. Opps MononymousSean beat me to it.
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Community did it first (season 7, “meowmeowbeenz”), but yeah, similarly chilling.
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And the Chinese haven’t learned how to game the system?
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I did stop and think about this for a minute. Western countries have their own social exclusion mechanisms – try doing stuff with no credit card – so are we vilifying China for having this system, or for failing to dress it up more subtly?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a hellish concept, and any society that introduces something like this is certain to become dramatically worse. But there are plenty of scenarios (like walking into an expensive restaurant) where your “citizen score” is absolutely being read and acted upon, even without a database to formalise the arrangement. At least the Chinese system is clear and upfront.
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Oops.
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Madness. If it had just been the previous punitive elements, there would be at least some doubt about this system’s purpose, but with that last bit it’s very clear that this is quite flatly, about mind control.
Fucking PRC man, I’m so tired of that looming evil empire on my planet.
Can there just be a nice rebellion at some point?
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over a billion are not on the blacklist. I am quite sure they found loopholes.
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There was.
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That was a protest that ended tragically and demonstrated beyond all doubt what the PRC really is.
Rebellions generally involve better planning, and more guns.
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Similar systems exist in the Western world - e.g in Germany where credit rating companies have an impact on nearly every business transaction not involving cash between consumers and businesses.
Some differences exist: the Chinese system is one sponsored and maintained by the state, while the credit rating companies in Germany are privately owned. And the Chinese court system is much more arbitrary and rule of law exists to a much smaller degree then in Germany making it very difficult to challenge the scores. However the fact that German credit rating companies are private makes legal regress against them pretty difficult as well.
In addition, no fly lists exist in many Western countries listing. So all in all: pretty awful but by no means much worse then what exists in the West.
In my mind the real difference remains the rule of law - and it seems quite obvious that this has been losing ground in Western societies recently.
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That episode had me seriously considering deleting my Facebook account.
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And so Sesame’s promise of using social ostrocization to make every citizen a collaborator to quarantine off dissent is starting to happen.
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Watch what you say, your FB account might become suspended like mine.
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They need stormtroopers to clear a path for the tanks.
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North Korea has a similar system. But, as you might expect, it’s more sinister and deadly.
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