China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
newscientist.com
China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
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Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#2Old-school dictatorships were so brash and clumsy the way they punished dissent with firing squads and trips to the gulag.
It's just as effective to punish dissent by slowly but surely ruining the life of those who express dissenting opinions. That way, instead of making dissenters into martyrs, you just make them look like losers.
Very clever, China.
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#3Charles Stross commented on these reports, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-could...
"The gamification of social conformity, overseen by an authoritarian government and mediated by nudge theory, is a thing of beauty and horror; who needs cops with nightsticks to beat up dissidents when their friends and family will give them a tongue-lashing on behalf of the government for the price of a discount off a new fridge? ... You can see your score in real time, get helpful tips on what to do (or not to do) to grind for points, and if you're thinking about doing something a bit naughty a handy app will give you a chance to exercise second thoughts and erase your sin before it is recorded."
A 2014 Chinese planning document for the credit system, https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan... said, "... its inherent requirements are establishing the idea of an sincerity culture, and carrying forward sincerity and traditional virtues."
In the 1970s, Chile tried cybernetics at a national scale, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machin...
"At the center of Project Cybersyn (for “cybernetics synergy”) was the Operations Room, where cybernetically sound decisions about the economy were to be made ... One wall was reserved for Project Cyberfolk, an ambitious effort to track the real-time happiness of the entire Chilean nation in response to decisions made in the op room. Beer built a device that would enable the country’s citizens, from their living rooms, to move a pointer on a voltmeter-like dial that indicated moods ranging from extreme unhappiness to complete bliss."
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#4Charles Stross commented on these reports, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-could... "The gamification of social conformity, overseen by an authoritarian government and mediated by nudge theory, is a thing of beauty and horror; who needs cops with nightsticks to beat up dissidents when their friends and family will give them a tongue-lashing on behalf of the government for the price of a discoun…
One little thought:
By including political loyalty in credit scores, you basically outline your political pain points. Which are usually hidden - in closed societies by censorship and pressure, in pluralistic societies by social conventions.
When you go from "pain points are not known" (to a layperson) to "pain points are known but avoided", it's a step back. Yes, vocal minority now faces some pressure, instead silent majority now knows what topics are there to be careful about and gives them some thought.
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#5Old-school dictatorships were so brash and clumsy the way they punished dissent with firing squads and trips to the gulag. It's just as effective to punish dissent by slowly but surely ruining the life of those who express dissenting opinions. That way, instead of making dissenters into martyrs, you just make them look like losers. Very clever, China.
Humans have basically been doing this since forever, via models like J.S. Mill's social tyranny. Here in the West we already do it to some degree through upvoting/downvoting, Facebook likes and Twitter followers, Tinder, Hot or Not, and Peeple, among others. It seems less like a new form for evil government oppression so much as one we will gladly push on each other ourselves - another evolution of using technology to streamline age-old human interactions.
"Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself." -On Liberty
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#6Old-school dictatorships were so brash and clumsy the way they punished dissent with firing squads and trips to the gulag. It's just as effective to punish dissent by slowly but surely ruining the life of those who express dissenting opinions. That way, instead of making dissenters into martyrs, you just make them look like losers. Very clever, China.
> Very clever, China.
But is it, really? Introducing arbitrary, statistically irrelevant incentives into the rating only goes to undermine the rating's effectiveness: gauging the financial risk. In the end it is a penalty imposed on Chinese banking and overall economy.
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#7On the one hand, this is very spooky. On the other, it seems like it could be a precursor to a social currency similar to the Whuffie[0] in Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". I remember that reading that book, I couldn't help but feel that, as we move closer to a post-scarcity society, the rise of something like that would be inevitable, and might in some ways be much better than what we have now.
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#8Old-school dictatorships were so brash and clumsy the way they punished dissent with firing squads and trips to the gulag. It's just as effective to punish dissent by slowly but surely ruining the life of those who express dissenting opinions. That way, instead of making dissenters into martyrs, you just make them look like losers. Very clever, China.
> Very clever, China. But is it, really? Introducing arbitrary, statistically irrelevant incentives into the rating only goes to undermine the rating's effectiveness: gauging the financial risk. In the end it is a penalty imposed on Chinese banking and overall economy.
You evaluate this as a credit score. It is not. It is a "citizen score", where the Chinese state is in effect levying an extra tax on business in order to finance financial benefits for those it considers well behaved, and where a credit score is just one of the components.
They could have done the same with direct cash transfers, but here they're leveraging the credit system to make it less blatant (you can pretend to yourself the loan you got wasn't because you pushed your neighbour into withdrawing those posts) and seemingly more rewarding (they just need to finance whatever increased bad credit it causes, so the overall amounts will be larger than if they spent the same on direct transfers).
As a credit score, yes, it's clearly flawed. As a means of controlling the population? It remains to be seen how it'll work for them, but the cost/benefit tradeoff for the Chinese government is whether it costs more or less than maintaining the same control with police and censors.
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#9Charles Stross commented on these reports, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-could... "The gamification of social conformity, overseen by an authoritarian government and mediated by nudge theory, is a thing of beauty and horror; who needs cops with nightsticks to beat up dissidents when their friends and family will give them a tongue-lashing on behalf of the government for the price of a discoun…
One little thought: By including political loyalty in credit scores, you basically outline your political pain points. Which are usually hidden - in closed societies by censorship and pressure, in pluralistic societies by social conventions. When you go from "pain points are not known" (to a layperson) to "pain points are known but avoided", it's a step back. Yes, vocal minority now faces some pressure, instead silen…
Imagine if someone were able to fund a service to provide financial benefits based on inverting the scoring....
More realistically: It provides a (though presumably risky) means of identifying who the Chinese government is concerned about, which would potentially be of interest to dissidents as well... (risky because I presume they'll be keeping a close eye on accesses to this system, and because it of course would be trivial for them to ensure there's plenty of "plants" there to cause problems if dissidents were to use it to find likeminded people)
Re: China’s plan to give every citizen a social credit score
#10On the one hand, this is very spooky. On the other, it seems like it could be a precursor to a social currency similar to the Whuffie[0] in Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". I remember that reading that book, I couldn't help but feel that, as we move closer to a post-scarcity society, the rise of something like that would be inevitable, and might in some ways be much better than what we have now. […
You could also get the other edge of the sword like with the social popularity ratings satirized in the TV show Community's "MeowMeowBeenz" app episode -- of which the real-life example, the recently released app "Peeple", was lambasted in the media recently.