Live data from Hacker News

We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

thenexus.media

151–160 of 727 posts

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your credit score in America will never be used to deny your freedom of movement within America or go against you or any of your family members when applying for higher education. It is a fundamentally flawed comparison.

It might be used to deny your kid a college loan, though - which might work out the same as denying them higher education.

It absolutely works the same way. There are would be doctors everywhere who never got the chance because of their parent's mistakes, or misfortunes, because we've made higher education a privilege in the country.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#152

The issue is that American media/discourse paints a very distorted view of what life under authoritarian rule is like. The truth is in many countries, unless you’re some kind of minority, politically active, or in legal trouble, day-to-day life is mostly similar to life in the west. But people don’t want to hear that, because we want to feel better than them. Like we wouldn’t tolerate that kind of life. Of course the…

Not entirely true. People living authoritarian worry about what they say, they self-censor out of fear, they defer to those in power (even at a local level), they accept a hierarchy of power rather than rights. I do not entirely disagree without, but lack of freedom does intrude into day to day life to some extent.

I live in the free and morally righteous West and I self censor all the time. Every single day. My beliefs would have me ostracized from communities and fired from my job.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#153
post #23

No there is a major difference when social credit is centralized to a single authority , and people cannot use the law to protect from that authority. otherwise, people have always judged each other with any way they could

You didn’t read the article. There is no single authority social credit system in China.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#154
post #29

There was a comment that appeared for a few minutes before getting deleted, that vaguely lined up with what I wanted to say. It didn't reappear, so I'll just repost it: >real life also has social credit. were you an asshole to the bartender last week? that goes to your reputation at that bar. did you volunteer with a local non-profit? that goes to your reputation with that organization. even without an algorithm, peo…

You can always move to new town and start again. The problem with all these social credit systems is that they're designed to follow you wherever you go forever. There is also zero recourse if a mistake was made; at least you can try and smooth things over with a bartender.

Most of our social credit systems let you start over.

The big ones (credit score and criminal history) are strongly tied to you, but have recourse to challenge mistakes and remove strikes from your record. The sufficiency of those recourses is open for debate though.

However, all of the private company's social credit systems have a much looser coupling to your actual ID. Often you can just make a new account. If you first get a new credit card, phone, phone number, internet connection, and address, most companies would completely fail to correlate you to their previous profile of you.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#155

>credit score Non-existent in the country I live in. There's a national registry of debtors and people end up there for a very good reason. >Linkedin, Amazon There's no reason to consider these to be essential services, I am not using either and I'm doing perfectly fine in life. >Instagram LOL >Uber, Airbnb There are several copycats, traditional taxis and hotels are still a thing and public transportation or your ow…

This is a predominantly American website with American users. Your experience is of little relevance here.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#156
post #116
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of it as an attack vector is the problem with people. I'm saying what you have isn't democracy. Your market isn't free. Voting between the same 2 parties or choosing to buy/rent from the same few mega corporations aren't real choices. Unless you guys start accepting that and find an alternative solution or system, you'll keep digging yourself deeper into the hole you're in. More debt, more wars, more homeles…

I don't know where you are from (I'm really curious though), but where I live there are more than two political parties and more than a few mega corporations to buy or rent from. You seem to have an extremely distorted idea of what live is like in "western countries".

I lived in the UK for 10 years, I've also lived in a number of other countries, from democracies, communist (Vietnam), and varying degrees of democratic and economic freedoms.

I'm aware there are more than exactly 2 parties in the ballots in many western countries. It's not about the numbers, but whether any of those choices really give the people real alternatives, or just different ways to screw the majority of the people.

As you can probably can see from the above interaction, people resort very quickly to ad hominem attacks.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#157
We often think of "social credit" as something far away, like in China. But it’s worth noticing how our own systems are starting to blend with state power. Just today, Graham Linehan, a comedy writer, was arrested by five UK police officers over social media posts when entering the country.

We may not call it social credit, but in practice we’re already building it.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#158
post #116
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of it as an attack vector is the problem with people. I'm saying what you have isn't democracy. Your market isn't free. Voting between the same 2 parties or choosing to buy/rent from the same few mega corporations aren't real choices. Unless you guys start accepting that and find an alternative solution or system, you'll keep digging yourself deeper into the hole you're in. More debt, more wars, more homeles…

I don't know where you are from (I'm really curious though), but where I live there are more than two political parties and more than a few mega corporations to buy or rent from. You seem to have an extremely distorted idea of what live is like in "western countries".

Can you please share your country of residence? Because in Germany I really don’t feel the choice. There are few political parties, but I don’t feel this variety helps in any way. There are few mega corporations for everything else, just check the list of richest germans.

Edit: I might be another troll, but from last few elections I don’t feel any progress. As an engineer I see continuous offshoring of well paid positions to cheaper EU countries. As self employed electrician I see regulatory and tax madness.

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that strange?

You are making my point though. You'd have a problem if you'd have to fake your religion or your sexual orientation so you get served, but it's fine if we do it with how "likable" we are.

How am I making your point?

Re: We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can always move to new town and start again. Contra: "Wherever you go, there you are." (i.e., you don't stop being an asshole just because you move.)

Of course, you are exactly the same person you were in your 20s and didn't improve one bit. Did you make mistakes? Too bad. That's you forever. Learning from mistakes is impossible.

Like credit scores events can be made to decay overtime.
Post reply on HN