Beijing To Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020 (bloomberg.com) 344
China's plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each resident. From a report: The capital city will pool data from several departments to reward and punish some 22 million citizens based on their actions and reputations by the end of 2020, according to a plan posted on the Beijing municipal government's website this week. Those with better so-called social credit will get "green channel" benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult. The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be "unable to move even a single step," according to the government's plan. Xinhua reported on the proposal Tuesday, while the report posted on the municipal government's website is dated July 18.
Black Mirror - Nosedive (Score:4, Insightful)
BM did an episode on this.
Sounds like a great fucking system.
Remind me why we're doing business with these people again?
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Only difference is in the US private companies keep scores on you instead of the government.
Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive (Score:5, Insightful)
Only difference is in the US private companies keep scores on you instead of the government.
Well, the other difference is that the only credit score they track is about, well, credit -- your ability to borrow money and otherwise incur future debts. And it's not some judgment on your overall fitness for society, it's just a judgment on how likely you are to pay what you owe.
This "other difference" is enormous. So big that they aren't remotely the same things at all.
The closest thing the US has to this social credit score is a criminal record. If you are convicted of a crime, especially a felony, then the government keeps track of that, and it will affect your ability to get a job, own a job, vote (in most states), etc. And if your crime was sexual in nature, it will affect where you're allowed to live and work as well. What makes this particularly nasty is that prosecutors are really good at extracting confessions and pleas of guilt even from innocent people.
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That's not really true unfortunately.
Cambridge Analytica was a relatively small databroker which focussed on deriving psychological profiles from your data through 'inference'. Larger databrokers have 8000 scores for sale. All of them feed your mundane data (social media scraped, smart home data, etc) to algorithms that then compare your data to that of other people they know more about, and if your data exhibits similar traits they will infer that you also fit in certain categories.
This talk explains thing
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The closest thing the US has to this social credit score is a criminal record.
It goes way beyond that, the US government can simply get what it wants because it is already in bed with big business. Business is already screening you out of many things behind "employment screening services". Many of these companies also have other names you wouldn't recognize, if you don't think you're already being watched all the time by companies who's sole purpose is to profit and minimize risk, I got a bridge I want to sell ya.
http://www.es2.com/ [es2.com]
Check out "instant checkmate", to lookup info on p
No fly lists (Score:3, Insightful)
Has similarity. A serious penalty, ex judicial, no right of appeal.
Only in the USA. No other democracy. It is very strange that the USA has the best constitution concerning rights and the worst record of actually providing them.
That said, it is still nothing like what China is proposing. And has already imposed on the Uyghurs. China is becoming very grim. Nobody there will dare to criticize the government on anything.
If Emperor Xi goes bad, he cannot be stopped domestically. And he can drag the who
Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, the other difference is that the only credit score they track is about, well, credit -- your ability to borrow money and otherwise incur future debts. And it's not some judgment on your overall fitness for society, it's just a judgment on how likely you are to pay what you owe.
Except that that's increasingly not true. We're now seeing one's credit score being used as criteria for determining what auto insurance rate you get, your ability to get housing, and (ironically) as part of the application review process when you try to get a job.
The negative feedback loop that that last one causes is particularly bad.
Google works for Chinese government (Score:3)
Only difference is in the US private companies keep scores on you instead of the government.
Well in China it is US companies, ex Google, helping to keep track of people on behalf of the Chinese government. Its only the US government that Google/Amazon/etc employees refuse to work for.
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Same as in pre WWII Germany, where Ford sold trucks and IBM Holerite machines.
Re:Google works for Chinese government (Score:5, Interesting)
Same as in pre WWII Germany, where Ford sold trucks and IBM Holerite machines.
(IIRC) U.S companies sued the US government for bombing German factories they invested in.
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In China, it's also Alibaba doing the tracking. As best I can tell, they have much tighter "relationship" with the Chinese government than Google does.
The Chinese government is one of Alibaba's owners. At various Chinese companies the communist party works with the corporate boards and senior management to make sure companies are in sync with government policies and long term goals. And then there is a certain amount of patriotism and trust in the government by many Chinese people.
In contrast, Google employees assist the Chinese government for money.
Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive (Score:5, Informative)
Are you joking? We do business in places where they abduct American residents, torture them, chop them up into pieces and dissolve them in acid.
Because there's money to be made.
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Yeah well, it's not like the voters are objecting much
Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, you will soon have this system too. Cars have mandatory GPS, so they will first start at car insurance based on your GPS recorded driving habits. Then they will combine it with traffic control to see if you are speeding/driving on red. Then it will naturally evolve to everyone having the chip (which has been discussed lately a lot) and that will evolve into everyone being tracked throughout the city instead of just your work or your home. And so on and so on.
And you will be rated based on all of those things and your social media use etc.
I wish i was kidding, but i'm not.
Mandatory GPS (Score:5, Informative)
They do not need mandatory GPS in cars. They already have number plate readers everywhere. Plus they can track your phone.
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I mean, thing with all large western states is, we don't really now if these kind of systems exist or not. Social media and credit information and so on is all out there, and there be large agencies with significant technical capabilities that we know are capable of tracking mobile phones' location and bank transfers etc. They operate gigantic data centers and apparently (if the Snowden leaks are to be believed) intercept data from ISPs and so on. Hell, Google
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Well singles day in China had about 3 to 4 times the estimated sales that Black Friday / Cyber Monday had last year, and that trend looks set to continue this year. Being able to sell competitively to the largest market in the world may in fact be a good thing for the US economy.
idiotic assessment (Score:5, Insightful)
People invest in protecting what's important to them; that's why banks invest in vaults and rich people have guards for their families and properties.
The USA has a huge military budget because:
[1] it values its freedom and independence
[2] it values its allies and trade routes
[3] it costs the USA a lot more to get any measure of military might since it does not have a conscripted military and its materiel is not made by government suppliers.
The USA has not, historically, HAD a "health service" because we traditionally left health to the people themselves, the private sectore, and communities and states (The US Constitution says nothing about healthcare, and it explicitly says that anything it does not assign to the federal government belongs to the people and to the states).
A little knowledge is dangerous --- and by your posting I judge you "mostly harmless"
Re:idiotic assessment (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA has a huge military budget because:
[1] it values its freedom and independence
[2] it values its allies and trade routes
[3] it costs the USA a lot more to get any measure of military might since it does not have a conscripted military and its materiel is not made by government suppliers.
The USA has a huge military budget because:
[1] it has whipped it's population, and that of a significant portion of the worlds population, into a frenzy of fear and paranoia, by maintaining a permanent war status since the end of WWII. Whether hot or cold, the USA has waged war against non-enemies, aggressively supporting brutal dictatorships around, killing millions in defence of "freedom and democracy" around the world. The USA as "protector" of the "free world" has been holding the human species hostage to the possibility of imminent extinction via nuclear weapons for nearly 70 years now. This in the name of valuing its freedom and independence.
[2]it has decided that the best social control mechanism for social pacification is to provide the lowest possible cost for goods and promoted consumerism as ersatz status symbols for a largely disenfranchised permanent underclass. In order to secure such cheap access to goods, the USA must dominate all world trade and be able to dictate prices for resources, resource extraction, production and distribution. This in the name of valuing its allies and trade routes.
[3] it spends a lot less money for the size of our military than any other country would for a similarly sized and scaled military because 18 year-old's with no prospects always form a cheap labor pool( "sold" as in soldier, comes from Roman Latin, daily wage-worker), particularly if one can convince them that they are serving their country men in the name of noble goals and values like "freedom and democracy". And because military production in the USA has always been "dual-purpose", a civilian feel-good, while producing weapons of mass destruction.
The USA has co-opted a tremendously large section of it's so-called private market for dual-purpose: production of disposable goods, while supplying the worlds largest military with an endless production line of "goods", of which no good can ever come. Most major manufacturing firms in the USA would not be economically viable if it were not for this arrangement. Boeing could never make it solely producing commercial air-liners, the market for such is not large enough, but if the Pentagon needs x number of fighter jets, missiles and rockets every year, which must be constantly restocked, due to usage in wars or due to degradation from not ever being used, they can show a profit for their civilian production lines. The same is, and has always been, true for GM, Ford, GE, etc.
The USA has not, historically, HAD a "health service" because we traditionally left health to the people themselves, the private sectore, and communities and states (The US Constitution says nothing about healthcare, and it explicitly says that anything it does not assign to the federal government belongs to the people and to the states).
The USA has not, historically, HAD a health service, because immiseration is a constitutive part of maintaining an exploitable permanent underclass. During the first 250 years of American history, surplus value, ie. profit, was made primarily by either a) stealing the indigenous peoples lands or b) exploiting "free labor", ie. slavery. Following the civil war profit has largely been made by exploiting those born into inter-generational poverty, both here and around the world. The majority of Europeans who immigrated to the USA during the first 150 years of colonization were debt-prisoners, ie. the then european permanent underclass. The USA has proudly cultivated cultural identities for the permanent underclass, going back almost 350 years, nowadays we call them "redne
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Medical treatment was important 230 years ago too, they had doctors and hospitals and knew the benefits of them. They also had machine guns and chemical weapons. They also had police brutality, illegal immigration, racial issues, illegal drugs, independent militia, mass media, fake news...
Yet none of it was important enough for them to grant control for any of it over to the federal government.
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No, he was residing in the US and planning to move to Turkey because his fiance liked it there. That's why the crown prince arranged his murder through their US Consulate; that's who he was making the arrangements through.
Re: Black Mirror - Nosedive (Score:3)
The Book of Lord Shang (Score:5, Interesting)
"A state where uniformity of purpose has been established for one year, will be strong for ten years; where uniformity of purpose has been established for ten years, it will be strong for a hundred years, where uniformity of purpose has been established for a hundred years, it will be strong for a thousand years; and a state which has been strong for a thousand years will attain supremacy."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re:The Book of Lord Shang (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The Book of Lord Shang (Score:5, Informative)
A Roman poet wrote "a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan". At the time, black swans were thought to not exist. In the 1500s, the phrase "black swan" was a common expression that something was impossible. Then in 1697, Dutch explorers saw black swans in Western Australia. The phrase then morphed into an expression that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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They already have more than enough corruption to taint it now, this will only compound it.
Then there are the errors that will always creep in.
It's a guaranteed self destructing system, the only question being how long can they keep it looking like it's working correctly, or at least good enough.
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That must have been the guy who wrote the speeches for Hitler.
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Should work flawlessly (Score:4, Interesting)
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Which is exactly why failure in inevitable but for those in power, the delusion of control is insatiably desirable. The system will be gamed and hacked and of course abused, if you do not run a real/fake profile a social look good construct, you would be very foolish but even then, corruption will make that meaningless, just swap out profile details. The easiest bit of corruption one, edit and your crap profile becomes someone else's and theirs becomes yours, that is simply inevitable.
From an external view
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In this time and age? All that's required is that someone feels you're a $conspiracy_theory_bad_group_member for him to make it his mission to fuck up your life.
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More about political identity politics and you being judged as not thinking right, well the design, which is in and of itself pretty disturbingly sick. Corruption will turn it into something much worse and that does not even touch purposeful espionage hacking, do real damage to the entire society by fucking around with history, ratings, where you have been, who you have seen, I mean espionage hacking would be inevitable because of the impact it would have, you can really fuck with the entire society with ve
What else? (Score:2)
Must be very fearful and control character people thinking out this BS and not taking into account what the rebels will heck out to circumvent everything.....
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Or more sinisterly, everyone has an implant with a nerve agent. Wrong thought? Someone is the Communist Party pushes the button and you are no more. However, they'll be nice about it and be sure to push the button while the incorrectly thinking human is near a crematorium...saves on gas.
Beijing is creating its own biggest headache (Score:5, Insightful)
Creating an entire subset of your society that is so locked out of daily life that they can't even function is a very, very quick way to incite organized resistance - not just out of ideological opposition, but from pure survival necessity. Blacklisted people will band together with blacklisted people to set up a parallel society so they can simply function day to day. Food? Housing? Transportation? You can't freeze out even 5% of the population from that and keep it contained.
If they were just making life difficult, that would be one thing, but it sounds like the Chicoms have gone so overboard that they won't be able to even eat or sleep under a roof. Watch it blow up.
Re:Beijing is creating its own biggest headache (Score:5, Insightful)
America does that with felony convictions in the United States, and no one cares because convicted felons "did something bad"...well, people who get blacklisted in China will be considered to have done something bad by Chinese standards. Nothing will happen except create a nice pool of easily exploitable people.
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And see what it has done for the US. In some towns there are areas where even the police doesn't dare to go anymore, this is the very definition of a parallel society with its own rules, its own policies and its own social system.
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No, we don't have towns where the police don't dare to go. We have towns where the police don't care to go.
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Which prompts the next question: if you have a bad social credit score how easy is it to repair it?
Is it like social media where you can buy likes to boost your score?
Re:Beijing is creating its own biggest headache (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, illegal immigrants could always just, you know, not come here...The Chinese in China don't have a choice.
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You're kidding, right? Right-leaning farmers, restaurateurs, constructionn/real estate developers LOVE having illegal immigrants here, since they provide the cheap labor those industries need. They just want to make sure those immigrants STAY illegal, since with a path to citizenship, their easily exploitable labor pool collapses.
Using them as a convenient scapegoat to drum up votes from the politically illiterate and bigoted working class is just a fortuitous side effect.
The Republican leadership has never
Why do you think that is a problem - for China? (Score:4, Interesting)
Blacklisted people will band together with blacklisted people to set up a parallel society
Yep! And then they will either be sent to re-education camps, or "disappeared".
China in fact would find it very HANDY for such people to band together, it would save them a lot of time.
If you want a 100% effective Panopticon, I can think of no better state on Earth that can make that happen by sweeping the undesirables under the rug.
So what everyone has to decide in the end is, do they want a model like that or a model like America? I'm not really sure there are any other workable models left.
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Re:Why do you think that is a problem - for China? (Score:5, Insightful)
America, with its no-fly list, its sex offender list where taking a pee or a selfie can fuck your life, your criminal thing where being arrested and released is enough to fuck you, your employment laws that allow you to be fired for posting the wrong thing somewhere? The right to own a gun with how many exceptions?
Not to mention the political system that gives a choice of Coke or Pepsi and everyone is judged by their political affiliation.
As someone posted up the page, great rights written into your Constitution, shitty in practice.
For someone like you, with a good social credit standing, your country seems great, wait till you get wrongly arrested, especially if you can't afford a lawyer.
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They aren't freezing people out of food, housing, transportation but instead "luxury items" like airplane travel, high speed rail tickets, rent in premium neighborhoods, etc.
They haven't said there is no plan for these people. I'm predicting axlotl tanks.
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Now they are only planning the freeze them out of luxury item. Bureaucratic creep knows no bounds, and the Chinese Communist Party doesn't either.
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Creating an entire subset of your society that is so locked out of daily life that they can't even function is a very, very quick way to incite organized resistance...
Yeah, it's like someone said, "Let's see how long it takes to create a hidden underclass of those who've failed out or dropped out of the system".
First thought I had when reading this story.
Actually they're solving the problem (Score:3)
See, in order for a ruling class to keep a working class in line they need to divide the working class. In America we do this along racial lines (Black/White/Latino). India uses a caste system. Japan got creative and declared some professions "unclean" and forced families into them, then kept lists of those families.
The goal here is to get you "kicking down". e.g. to direct your rage at the poor lot in life you got at a gro
A nightmare for freedom, but no benefits? (Score:3)
Obviously this is like a dystopian dream and will stifle the feeling of freedom. But we should keep in mind Beijing (and China in general) has some a lot of the sort of petty problems which more rarely happen in the west: Rampant littering. People encourage their children to urinate in the street. Scammers take advantage of tourists, brazenly acting in public places in broad daylight. Taxi drivers lie about the fare, or refuse to use the meter so they can set whatever rate they choose, depending on the passenger's skin color and accent. People get to the front of a queue not by waiting, but by walking to the front of the queue.
The questions that come to mind are whether it will work, whether this is temporary (until the above cultural problems are solved), and whether it's worth the loss in feeling of freedom.
We had all that in the west (Score:5, Interesting)
China's problem is they treat their working class like crap. This is the kind of crap you have to resort to when you need to keep people from Unionizing.
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Know how we solved it? Mostly cops giving out tickets... no massive and terrifying misuse of government power.
Ha, good one. You know what problem China doesn't have? A police force that scares the crap out of regular people. Most police don't even carry guns! Obviously a big part of that is that the Chinese aren't as violent as the Americans, by and large. But Chinese police mediate in a way that's almost unheard of for American cops. Conflicts are often solved without court cases.
It's a bit of a paradox. China is certainly a police state. But the police are less likely to ruin your day than American police. Plus,
Re:A nightmare for freedom, but no benefits? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: A nightmare for freedom, but no benefits? (Score:4, Interesting)
Counterexample: every country that joined the EU gave up the supremacy of its own high court, have up the ability to determine numerous regulations, indeed have up the final say on its national budget as we see with Italy today.
DIctators will dictate. Motives matter (Score:2)
I actually think the underlying idea is good, but the motivation is all wrong here. The underlying idea is basically like a credit report on an individual or the investment-grade ratings issued by such companies as Moody's. I think the main problem is not with the ratings, but with the secrecy. In particular the public parts of the information should be available to the public without paying for the harvesting and various attempts to lock it down under copyright and other schemes.
Let me bring it home to Sla
The nightmare may also happen in the West (Score:2, Insightful)
What happens in China is definitely a nightmare, but before we laugh at those stupid Chinese we ought to take stock of what is happening right here in the West.
We are being monitored too. 24/7.
What we do online.
Who our friends are/were.
Where we go shopping.
What kinds of item we usually buy.
The types of association / club we have membership in.
Whom we met last Wednesday.
Which TV / online streaming programs we consume.
And so on. And so forth.
Who is to say what's happening in China won't happen here?
The difference (Score:2)
Yes it's true in the west we are also closely monitored.
However, there is a difference:
* In China you are monitored to make sure you fit within the system the government thinks is desirable.
* In the U.S. you are monitored but deviation from the system is simply recorded to be used against you if you get too out of line, or to sell things to you.
In actual terms you have much more freedom to be yourself in the U.S., it just means enduring more ads.
In both cases truly radical elements will have a harder and ha
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Are you completely sure they still have less ads?
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Of course not. That costs money.
They sell that data to the ones that send you to the gulag. Who are, funny enough, funded by you. For both things, buying your data AND sending you to the gulag.
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Cash needs "work". China can stop the ability to get work.
Without cash "livable" in any city becomes difficult everyday.
We're revoking their most favorite nation status (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, I can buy a 50" TV for $200 bucks this Black Friday. And the new iPhone is _sweet_.
already happens (Score:3)
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All the better to make people aware of what kind of behavior can get their government's bloomers in a twist. Open doesn't mean better here, you have to learn how to think like a Communist Party Apparachik. Now go back and finish your Kool-Aid, it is good for you and contains the seeds of superior man.
Psychopaths rise to the top. (Score:2)
Give me your tired (Score:3)
Your poor
Your huddled masses
With a good social credit score
Behaviour? (Score:2)
So they won't be judged based upon their thinking or clothing or reading?
That's good, isn't it?
What a bunch of motherfucking assholes! (Score:2)
Yet another prime example of why, if there are indeed advanced, starfaring alien civilizations out there, that they don't bother talking to us or even letting on
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Re:What a bunch of motherfucking assholes! (Score:4, Insightful)
Which—even if true—has nothing to do with the topic at hand, since China isn't really a Communist country in any way other than in the name of the ruling party.
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Just read how many Mao sacrificed in his famines and other pogroms. The Chinese Communist Party was born on their people's corpses, and they are proud of it.
So, given what most people believe (Score:2)
Reality will simply conform to expectation. I'd have thought all systems would converge on that.
What does this remind me of.... (Score:2)
Right! That has been the staple of commie countries for pretty much the past century (read: as long as commie countries existed). Let's praise the good worker and badmouth the bad kulak and the atrocious bourgeois. Let's have worker of the week/month awards with extra rations and preferred allocation of rare goods and luxury items like cars.
Why didn't it work, again?
Riiight, because nobody gave a fuck since those in power who were part of the supply chain could always simply take what they wanted even if th
Scary as f*ck, is it not? (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know that Orwell would say "OK, I give up. I was totally wrong, this is way more sophisticated a totalitarian system than I could dream up." We all happly carry our dobbleplusgood portable televisor around with us. Add a super-controlling engieered gouvernment to that, and you're way past 1984. Big time.
Maybe next time around I'll really ditch my regular smartphone for something else. I've allready considered stocking up on older Blackberrys. They're pretty cheap now.
They are doing it wrong (Score:3)
A plan for mental illness (Score:5, Interesting)
This system will be heaven for people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder because they will be able to extend their abuse onto anybody they meet in a meaningful way. They will be able to charm and connive all of the social goodwill they need while causing serious damage to the people they abuse.
Social media is the vehicle for personality disorders to spread.
How to destabilize China... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hack the thing. The hack could come from a government, or a private organization like WikiLeaks with an interest in causing chaos. Don't destroy it, just start slightly altering people's credit.
Just start lowering the credit of people with military training and access to guns a fractional amount. Veterans, police, military, etc. Make them slightly more angry and frustrated. Then start fractionally increasing the credit of people with borderline anti-government views. Create an angry underclass with military training and access to weapons while helping some of the people who will radicalize them do their thing.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be "unable to move even a single step,"
So basically they will create a group of people who have nothing left to lose. Well done. That's going to work out great.
Do no evil! (Score:2)
1984 is an instruction manual....for CCP and Google.
See how our "progressive" overlords go high, arsholes first.
It's absolutely hilarious how all those progressive silicon types benefit from worker's exploitation and openly support totalitarian regimes.
Disgusting!
We just don't add the word "social" yet. (Score:2)
The Chinese are behind the curve. In the USA, we've had this rolled out for years.
https://www.moneycrashers.com/... [moneycrashers.com]
TL:DR
Loans are tough (or impossible) to get
If you get a loan, your rates are higher.
Can't rent an apartment (As a landlord, *I* check credit ratings)
Can't get some jobs (My employer checked my credit rating)
Can't get security clearance
You may not be able to get a cell phone contract
Higher insurance premiums
Trying to avoid the credit system is tough too. Try renting a car or buying an airline ti
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Dude, why go there? I happen to be trans and liberal and I'm horrified by this. This something right out of 1984 and it has nothing to do with "liberals". I'm quite sure I enjoy my freedoms and privacy as much as you do. I have no idea what you have against trans people but that doesn't mean we don't want the same things in life. The last place I would ever want to live is in a totalitarian state.
Re:just add Transgender bathrooms and free abortio (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude literally stated that he's opposed to all of this as a liberal and you went and argued the exact opposite point because apparently either you cannot read or just enjoy building massive strawmen. How 'fun'. I can do this too, watch me:
"What's the big deal, China's just making sure no-one can openly criticize the Dear Leader or his party, and those who dissent too hard or belong to the wrong religion/ethnicity/political movement will be taken to 're-education camps' where if need be they can be killed and their organs harvested [forbes.com] if some Good Loyal Citizens(tm) are in need of them, isn't that your ultra-conservative Trumpian end-game; to have the government be able to operate with impunity, above the rule of law and get rid of the pesky media that Trump calls 'the enemy'?"
See how easy this is? Now Is this productive for the discussion at large in any way? Nope. It's just 'ooh I'm so right they're so wrong aah' -partisan ego jerk off for cunts like you. Grow the fuck up man.
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And you're certainly able to explain what this has jack all to do with a surveillance system that even Orwell couldn't make up?
Re:Totalitarianism In a Nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
Same shit happened under McCarthy, which is ironic given your words. Could happen again in the US in a few years, only it would be an App that measured your Patriotism. It's not a left/right thing, it's a totalitarian thing.
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MaCarthy was an amateur. And he did not have the technology.
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People near any illegal gathering will be watched.
Any news published about such events will be removed. The publisher will face travel bans and work bans.
Like the West having social media shadow banning content and accounts.
Re: The ultimate form of control... (Score:2)
Yeah because âoegoing privateâ for treatment isn't a thing...
And guess what. Even our private treatment is much cheaper than yours.
You literally have the worst health system in the world.
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I had to spend the night in emergency in Guangzhou after suffering heatstroke. Clean, modern facility, up-date equipment, well-trained staff, doctors who'd studied at Johns Hopkins and Karolinska. Four hundred dollars (¥1600). That's about twice what I'd pay here in Sweden, but it's only about 1/100 of what it'd cost me in the US.
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s/1\/100/1\/10/
Sorry about that.
Re: The ultimate form of control... (Score:2)
https://www.theguardian.com/so... [theguardian.com]
You're in good company, or bad company. That national health services aren't government run, just government financed, is probably beyond you.
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And they don't matter.
You have the freedom of speech. This is correct. But nobody is required to listen. You have the right to assemble peacefully, this is correct. But mostly because those in power noticed that it doesn't matter. You can petition what you want. Please leave your petition in the waste basket provided, we'll ignore it later.
Anything else you wanted to do or say?
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If nobody wants to listen, how can you be sure you were saying something?
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Because it could be measured.
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My friend Ben says you're an idiot [brainyquote.com].
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For a while there, I thought China had figured out how to apply the Nash Equilibrium to society via big data and the cognitive neuroscience of behavior.
Then I thought, it's China, dude. What's really going on is probably more of a game of "Fuck You, Buddy", where somebody's got to win, and if it isn't you, it might be me.
Oh, wait... that's us.
Never mind.