China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

"If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well."

Also, while it starts with financial responsibility, the ambitions are larger:

"The intentions of the new system are not only economical, fighting fraudulent practices, but also moral. 'This is a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to promote among its citizens "socialist core values" such as patriotism, respecting the elderly, working hard and avoiding extravagant consumption', says Creemers."

What do they do? What's holding them afloat? Hint: it's the remnaints of democracy and civil society, not special services looking for destabilizing factors day and night. Special services don't hurt, but everyone relying on just them had bitter end. Treating your citizens like criminals didn't help.

I assure you that Syria and Libya had extensive systems to counter insurgents, and it led them straight nowhere. As it was for DDR and USSR.

- Criminal records / record of conduct - Tracking by various advertising companies, market research, etc. - Whatever records NSA, FBI etc. keep on you. This doesn't even have to be a file-per-person, but they have your metadata, and if you stick out, you might come under closer scrutinty.

The difference is that these sources are not pulled together. Also as a sibling post noted, there is no feedback to the citizens. I don't know whether I have a bad or a good score with the police. I hope I have a good score :-). But if you want to consciously change citizens behavior, you'd have to tell them their scores. (Well, what we do right now changes citizens behavior by scaring them, but thats a different issue.)

One thing I find curious is that there is apparently no sensitivity among the inventors of this scheme towards how dystopian it sounds like. That's why you can have big posters in China saying things like "Friends! Be virtuous and vigilant!" or a Hong Kong official saying something in earnest like "if the brain is sick, it must be washed" with regards to school textbooks. There are PSAs and government posters in the US, too, and people try to push their agendas in school curriculums there, too... but for one they would not go quite as far in the US, and especially such manipulation is attempted much more tastefully.

How comprehensive is the data analysis system that my government uses ???

Is it more ... or less comprehensive ???

Do they really only use it on "bad" actors ??? Or do they use it on everyone to determine who has the capacity to be a "bad" actor ???

Etc etc etc.

Articles like this, at least, give me a good idea of what they are probably doing. However, I have to say, I'd like more articles on how to remain invisible to government surveillance systems. Though I'm pretty sure it is impossible at this point. Or, at the very least...

impractical in the extreme.