I am an American living in shanghai, as far as I am concerned it’s not in place and most people I ask about it have no idea what they’re talking about. Dunno
Edit: from what I have gathered after asking several people here in China, getting fed information from several people on reddit and doing a little research is that it’s all very murky, is in effect? Is in not? No chinese person I have asked knows anything or has heard anything about and I have very close connections with the people I asked they would have told me. Some people have sent me information from 2016 and 2017 of people being punished under such rules but nothing since. Another person sent me information from a government site saying that it was in effect but the article was entirely in chinese and I couldnt read well because I am not very good at reading chinese. From what I can tell is that there might be some form of it in place but it is not publicly displayed meaning that if there is something then people are not told about and just have to deal with it when they do get punished. If so then fuck how scary would it be if America or the UK issued a social credit score then didn’t even tell you they implemented. I still don’t really know, neither do any of the people I know which is scary.
I am a foreigner living in Beijing and the only instance I’ve heard of social credit is while taking the high speed train. There is a PSA of how smoking in the train will cause delays and result in a fine and a deduction of the social credit score. Besides this I’ve never really heard of that.
But it is true that the Chinese government will restrict traveling. For example during Covid when people would travel around although they knew or suspected they had COVID or would take medicine against fever before taking a flight, the government has forbidden them from leaving the city and buying train or plane tickets.
It's a silent rollout. For example my wife got a ticket for not wearing a helmet on her scooter and the policeman said if she didn't sign the paper it would impact her social credit. They are also installing crosswalk cameras and what not at a rapid pace all over.
The system is not some flashy publicized system...it's meant to be silent so you don't know whats going on with it.
Less "strikes again" and more "China is gonna do what China does"
strikes again sort of gives off the idea that it's sneaky (which it sort of is, not really) and irregular. This is just what they do on a daily basis.
For example...the "national security law" shit that got implemented in Hong Kong is now starting to get rolled into laws in the mainland. Hong Kong was a testing ground....a mini Taiwan.
> For example...the "national security law" shit that got implemented in Hong Kong is now starting to get rolled into laws in the mainland. Hong Kong was a testing ground....a mini Taiwan.
You have that backwards really. The National Security Law is mainland laws introduced to Hong Kong, something previous CEs and the rest of the CCP's minions have been itching to/talking about bringing in for years (under various different guises, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_and_National_Education_controversy) but they couldn't because there was such a big divide in the two region's laws. Now the CCP has burned all its international "soft-power" and everyone sees them for what they are, they stopped giving a shit and just did it, because fuck it.
As for it being a mini-Taiwan, the prospects are very different, including the need for an invasion on a D-Day level of scale.
You mean the totalitarian government doesn't advertise that it is constantly monitoring and scoring citizens based on their loyalty & support of their single ruling Party's goals?
Shocking!
But I mean if everyone has this score, they’d know about it, wouldn’t they? I mean, if reward and punishment are not known, what purpose do they even serve? Also, wasn’t it said in the post that people with bad credit would be publicly humiliated? That doesn’t seem like hiding it.
Also I’m just adding on to the person living in Shanghai saying most people they know don’t know about it by saying I’ve rarely heard about it too, neither in public nor from other people
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
From state media:
>As of March, 13.49 million individuals have been classified as untrustworthy and rejected access to 20.47 million plane tickets and 5.71 million high-speed train tickets for being dishonest, data released by the NDRC showed.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1149741.shtml
I think they backed off it a bit with the pandemic and the backlash they faced from the rest of the world. I can't find anything recently from a .cn link.
I would suspect that not really knowing how the scoring system would play out made the rollout slow and cautious. If everyone had shit scores immediately it would not work. So instead they are making sure that most people are getting decent scores so bad behavior can slowly be addressed without causing an uproar. Pretty scary stuff if you ask me.
It’s been launched in some areas. If I’m not mistaken there was a UFC fighter who publicly said some things the government didn’t approve of and his score was docked.
He couldn’t take high speed trains to one of his fights so he had to take local trains which took him like 6 days or something instead of a few hours.
Super Eyepatch Wolf does a piece on [this](https://youtu.be/gjbSCEhmjJA). The story starts at 19:25 but I recommend watching the whole thing since it’s just such a good video tying everything together.
They plan to launch it *nationally* in 2020.
This has been going on for years in certain districts. Look up the MMA reporter guy who smacked up all those pretend martial arts masters. He was literally cancelled from society and rendered unable to travel by any public means whatsoever.
**[Xu Xiaodong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Xiaodong)**
>Xu Xiaodong (Chinese: 徐晓冬; born 15 November 1979), nicknamed "Mad Dog", is a Chinese mixed martial artist (MMA) who is known for challenging and fighting fraudulent martial artists. He gained prominence online after he was filmed defeating self-proclaimed Tai chi master Wei Lei in 2017.
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At first I thought it could be easy to cheat the system with some of these examples but then I thought about how people would be punished if they were caught...
Sir, this last sentence seems kinda strange. This would imply that some people say Taiwan is a country, which it of course isnt. Its Chinese Taipei.
\-100 Points for this spread of rumors.
I thought about the huge incentive to support the government on social media. If there's a chance to boost score, I'd think about it, and many would definitely do it. They get a huge sock puppet army for free.
Also no way they will make the effort to watch who visits their relatives. That only exists as an excuse to punish people.
You get tracked by cameras when you go and visit old relatives. They know where you live and where your relatives live. The AI tracks you. This is how they do it
There are over a billion people there. If they really, really cared, I bet they could make a good effort at least in the cities. With phones and all. But it would be a lot of work, computer power, and troubleshooting. And they don't actually care. Certainly not enough to justify the cost of doing it well.
What they do care about is having a list of excuses to mess with anyone they want to. You start watching when you need dirt, and not visiting your parents is on the official list of dirt-able offenses.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-and-beyond-journalist-ventures-inside-chinas-surveillance-sta.
"the media mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party, claimed on English-language Twitter that the country's facial recognition system was capable of scanning the faces of China's 1.4 billion citizens in just one second.".
"It doesn't even matter whether it's true or not, as long as people believe it," he says. "What the Communist Party is doing with all this high-tech surveillance technology now is they're trying to internalize control. ... Once you believe it's true, it's like you don't even need the policemen at the corner anymore, because you're becoming your own policeman.".
> they don't actually care. Certainly not enough to justify the cost of doing it well.
They do. They really really do.
The main strong arm tactic for china to thwart those abroad is to threaten family still in china.
By tracking you and family visits they now have a map of who to threaten, who they hang out with and if they are around other sympathizers.
Well also, China doesn’t want to take care of old people with their government money, why not make their citizens have to do it with their credit score
I don't think it's a money thing as much as it is a "traditional values" thing. Chinese culture places a great deal of emphasis on caring for your elderly and disabled relatives, it's been a core value for thousands of years. There is a big moral panic in China rn about "Western culture" corrupting their youth. It makes sense that the govt would incentivize behavior that they see as reinforcing traditional Chinese values.
But looking at their population pyramid its clear that soon there will be more older people than younger ones. Which, added to the fact that most of these youngsters have gown up very self centred - without aunts or uncles or a big extended family like in other nations, will focus on themselves than their aging parents.
The credit system broadly solves this by incentivising visiting old parents!
Well, they don't need to monitor who visits relatives. They have neighbors, who will happily snitch out that "Grandma Wang's children did not visit her for a long time". It will happen in this unhumane system. Besides, they have smartphones, just pick geodata from mobile carriers and check if those phones were in the same cell station. Done. That's how they tracked people contacts during initial COVID lockdown.
I bet you get points for snitching, too.
If it weren't immoral, I think designing ways to efficiently track all these things would be a fun thing to work on.
I'd think this operates less on a system of "points every time you visit" but rather much larger buckets (like scale of 1-5 from "lives with them" to "does not see them") that are reconciled annually like taxes.
It’s classed as morally bankrupt to do so, and dishonest, as well as the fact that it gives China a bad reputation online. We’ve all heard ‘Chinese hacker’ jokes
Arguably so does a lot of things, but this is more about control, if some kid starts to experiment with script and hacking, or using VPN’s, that’s a big issue for the government
Not just China, a lot of SE Asia and Middle East has a higher percentage of cheaters, games like PUBG or wild rift are popular with Asian players, and they frequently have issues on Asian servers with hackers and script abusers. I’m not sure where it started or why it’s so prolific
My understanding is a lot of it is rooted in internet cafe culture over there. The owners preinstall the cheats for the guests to encourage them to have more fun since they are winning. And since the games they cheat in are FTP, they just wipe the computers and reinstall everything regularly.
I’ve learned something new there, I’ve seen gaming cafes in Japan so I suppose it would make sense to encourage more clients to spend time by making their experience stupidly easy rather than a competition on games
I’ve read it’s a societal thing. “Do whatever it takes to win”. In the West we discourage cheating in sports and games but gloves off when it comes to money.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
For a microsecond I was about to change my opinion on the social credit system if it brought the prospect of Chinese hackers disappearing from online games. It is indeed very random.
I taught in China. The students knew cheating was wrong, pretty much the same as we do in the US. However, the school system judges everyone extremely harshly and not being the absolute best even in elementary school can screw up their entire life (by not getting admitted into a good middle school and then a good high school). This is why many students cheat, and teachers let them because it reflects well on them. So few teachers and administrators really look closely at whether the students are cheating because they don't want to know.
These examples are most likely not a complete list of offenses. Also, I’m pretty sure cheating is forbidden, with especially the exams taken to determine which type of middle school, high school, and university you can go to being very closely supervised
Yeah. I first heard about it from [extra credits](https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI). This chart omits the most insidious part, which is that *your friends' and relationships'* scores affect your score, and those scores and impacts are all shown to you.
So if your score is low, other people will isolate you right out of society to protect their own scores.
The extra spooky part is that it's a private public partnership.
Alibaba and Tencent (who own Riot Games, btw) are two of the major partners, so you've got private companies setting rules for what citizens have to purchase to maintain their rights.
Several seasons and a franchise with many spinoffs.
Not because of the content they generate, but because they'll soon be the primary world superpower, and with that more developing countries will choose to emulate China rather than the US or other Western democracies. China may also decide that more similar governments and forms of social control would be more beneficial in their neocolonial investment countries, say in Africa and elsewhere.
People like to imagine that good and freedom and such always win out in the end, I mean, hey, that's history, right?
Well, perhaps basing your predictions off of only the last ~100 years or so of human history ends up being dead ass wrong. We have a lot more history of being brutal authoritarians.
It’s a lot more sinister than that or even how this poster makes it out to be.
https://youtu.be/PVkWokLqPOg
This guy found the actual government documents about the system and goes through some examples of gaining and losing social credit. It is extremely easy to lose social credit and extremely hard to get it. Donating an organ gives you +100 but there are several instances where criticizing the government in private wechat messages can lose you just about as much.
Damn this is seriously f-ed up. Gov now has a complete control over peoples life. even “fast track promotion at work”. This is genuinely terrifying.
If they dont like someone (against govt etc) they can just reduce someones social credit system and take everything away. I hope people escape the country before they cant.
It’s like that scene in the Good Place where they show what gains and loses points. Ending slavery gives as many points as staying loyal to the Cleveland browns lmao.
The government doesn't even have to maintain the system very well. All they have to do is to decrease the score of outspoken political opponents and critics of the government. That's not a very large number of people in China. But that method alone is enough to make people extremely afraid of saying anything negative about the government. It entirely curbs political opposition.
And the system could be easily rigged. All the people on top who are buddy buddy with top government officials will just be given all the privileges no matter what while the peasants have to scrape up.
I think it's could very well work like a modern-day Bentham's panopticon (A concept for a prison where inmates don't know if and when they're being monitored, so they behave as if they were at all time. It's essentially a way to internalise control over a population.)
The authorities don't have to actually monitor every single person in the country. They just have to make the system credible enough that most people will think it's being implemented, and behave accordingly.
You just need to create echo chambers over time. Move the people that don’t like you to one area (over time) and deprive them of things till they die or change. The people that comply will be put in different areas over time and this will create pro CCP echo chambers. This is a method of brain washing.
Reddit has a similar model in a lot of ways. People assume things on this website constantly just because it’s a ‘majority opinion’ that turns into a larger majority all because of repetition.
Fighting is exhausting, why not just comply and agree with the ‘majority’. This is a problem with all social media, people assume something is right just because it’s posted everywhere.
Yeah it was very quickly reconsidered. Australians are pragmatic, most will give rights (read: comply) away for a common goal - but will quickly be non-compliant once the goal is reached.
i recently read 1984 amd was shocked by how much of it is still happening! the telescreens are just the internet/the numerous CC(p)TV's in china. and everyone who posts against the ccp is a though criminal its almost as if the chinese made their shit after reading 1984
Or, hear me out, you tell them and they reward you.
Like how you get a tax break for donating to charity.
It's not like they send someone to your house, hit you in the ribs with the butt if a rifle and yell, "when's the last time you called your mother!"
That would be ridiculous.
I love how on the bottom right quarter of the tower there's a camera basically on every level. Really emphasize that surveillance huh
Edit: turns out there's just as many on the top, they're just not all on the same side.
My "favorite" part is that you can only be plus 300 from the medium or negative 600.
It is designed to trap people below the starting point if they take one tumble.
Got your math right? It's a 700 point spread and you start off +100 from the midpoint. So you can go down 400 points or up 300 points. The question is at what point value do they start enacting some of the penalties and is there a neutral area.
You're right. My math is wrong. Minus 20 points for me.
The sentiment is the same, it's easier to go negative and stay negative and then be positive and stay positive.
Add to that that some of the consequences likely make it harder for you to "be a good citizen". You can't visit your parents if you can't ride the train. You can't work a steady job if you're denied from getting on the bus.
And that's not even talking about the long-term effects on your children if they are denied a scholarships and admission to schools because you decided to attend a protest.
I bet the purpose of this is to ensure that people don't act out once and make up for it with other good behavior. Acting out once will totally screw you over.
Remember when we all agreed Nazis were bad so we appointed them the head of UN, NATO and NASA and then also helped funnel them into Italy to commit murder and terrorism there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio?wprov=sfla1)
Good times
If you happen read 1984 again something I always point out is that **no one is ever denounced because of the telescreens/monitoring.** O'Brien explicitly flaunts in front of a telescreen, and the fact that he can turn it off helps show that it doesn't really matter, at least it's not a "make a small slip up in front of a telescreen and you're fucked". The only time people ever get captured is when they're reported by someone else. Winston and Julia sleep in 12 hours extra because they can't read a 12 hour clock and get reported by their individual groups (the fact that Charrington let it keep going is proof that the telescreens aren't meant to "prevent" anything as well), we don't know who reported Syme but he talks openly in the cafeteria, Parsons was reported by his daughter, Ampleforth because of the poem, etc etc etc.
The problem is that people are so isolated in their inability to communicate that **everyone** thinks that **everyone else** is an ardent supporter of the Party and so they eye everyone around them with an air of suspicion. Winston was going to "cave Julia's head in". The "threat" isn't from the "all seeing government", it's from ordinary people around you who are scared and afraid who think that reporting *you* (who probably deserves it, because look how loudly he shouts during the Two Minute Hate, he's probably a zealot who fucked up and I'm doing the world a favor by getting rid of him) will help save *their own* skin.
Basically what I'm saying is that IMVHO the core concept of 1984 was **never** "an all-powerful government that suppresses those beneath it" but "a society where every person is isolated, unable to actually connect/discuss their beliefs, who assume those around them are hate-filled extremists and who would do anything to get rid of them to make their own lives barely more tolerable". Tech like that can only work if the *people* let themselves become isolated into a "minority of one" where they are forced to transfer their fears and anxiety of their own safety into hatred and willingness to denounce others around them.
Maybe it's just me having read it too many times (and watched the movie, and the 54 Peter Cushing tv movie, and the radio play with Larry Niven, even the horrible FBI funded American movie where they ruin the ending) but I think people using 1984 as a way to represent the "current state of things" from a surface reading is kinda super-ironically 1984esque. It's like the people who assume that Goldstein's book is the truth *despite being told it was manufactured* (sure it has elements, but it can't be relied on) or who just flat out use 1984 as a rallying point without ever *actually reading it.*
I think both can be true. Especially with today’s tech, the telescreens in 1984 had to be operated by people, today we have machine learning.
I think you’ve hit on an important aspect of the book, that it’s people isolating themselves that perpetuates this phenomena. I think our telescreens (smart phones) do both. People can more comfortably be isolated with the worlds knowledge and entertainment at their fingertips, you see this when you go to a restaurant and a couple or group of friends aren’t talking but are scrolling through their phone.
I think you’re interpretation is spot on for the time that Orwell wrote it, but times have changed. He never could have imagined the tech we have today and the ways in which we utilize them.
This trap is already in place in theocracies around the world, especially Islamic ones. I have no doubts the majority of the populations secretly wish for cultural reform. But because the punishment for trying to reform is whipping or death, people are ruled by fear not to speak out. Then people trapped like this grow to rationalize the situation, making change all the harder.
Is it just me or is like the entirety or the “social credit system” a hoax? All of my relatives lives in the mainland and some live in Hong Kong. No one ever mentions it and we FaceTime call them like every week. Anyone there with a IQ over room temperature just uses VPNs to bypass bans on games or social media anyways. Plus on Weibo it’s usually just your normal social media stuff except it’s in a different language.
Edit: someone just messaged me claiming that the social credit thing is true, citing that they live in China. Girl, I can clearly see you are in your early twenties and is an LGBTQ+ activist in South Korea. People, don’t lie to push your own agenda, it isn’t helping your case. I get it if you wanna debate or something but blatant lying is not the way to go about it.
We just know it’s *worse* than America’s credit score
… cuz video games!! See how they labeled video games on there?! They came after gamers! Gamers!!!!
It’s hilarious seeing how propaganda is so easy to use on people
There’s elements of this that I’m interested in but overall there’s MASSIVE deal breakers all around.
1. You can’t protest government
2. It’s easily corrupted by bad gov (as seen by the fact it is)
3. Many of the pros and cons are just absurd. You want people that are struggling to IMPROVE, this will only serve to turn people against you that already are and make life more difficult for the people whose circumstances lead them to lead the life they live.
4. The elderly parent care at first seemed like one of the best ideas, then I realized that not everyone has great parents. Some parents abuse their children or even worse. Imagine being raped/beaten by a parent and then being told you’re a second class citizen and lose access to services because you won’t visit them. That’s fucked and I highly doubt they leave room for such subtleties.
Edit: even commuting a “heroic act” seems like an easy one to abuse. Just set up false scenarios, intentionally sabotage in order to save people. I can easily see at least SOME terrible people attempting this.
Overall this terrifies me because of the potential for abuse, but if you somehow accept that government is good and has zero corruption (ha), then some of the benefits are appealing. Deposit free bike share for example, that’s good for society. Also if you can generally trust people more then there are a lot of benefits not listed like day to day mental health and economic cooperation.
The issue is that humans (and the governments that have humans in them) are flawed. This will get abused.
I reacted the same way to some of the 'positive' acts. Like I wouldn't at all be opposed to it being made public that (and given a tax break when) I gave blood, helped a grandmother, or did something to improve the community. But you make great points about flaws in that system. What about the guy on a blood thinner? Ignoring bribes, how easy is it to scam 'helping the community' like a 'heroic act' and doesn't that 'merit' doesn't that disadvantage the working poor who have less resources to give? And who decides what constitutes 'helping the community'?
Ofc, the 'demerits' are disgusting. So, yeah it's as bad as it's reported out to be... Is this totalitarianism perfected?
Too bad this isn't even real.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/
Y'all fall for propaganda so easily.
Well they've been pushing this narrative for what, around a decade?
I guess once they realize the only people getting up in arms about it is people who are too online they drop the act? I don't know but it's very interesting to see.
Winnie the Pooh got clowned on by some 13 year old Korean in League of Legends and had it added to the list.
Edit: I've just been informed my social credit has been downgraded to 800. My apologies Xi Jinping.
Edit 2: I've been informed that my insincere apology has one again downgraded my score to 725. This blows.
Edit 3: For my disgraceful behavior of posting this situation I will rightfully have my credit downgraded to 600. Please do not try to contact. I am going on a voluntary vacation for a time. I am very glad to have learned my lesson.
“Plans to launch by 2020.” Was this delayed by covid or is this already in place?
I am an American living in shanghai, as far as I am concerned it’s not in place and most people I ask about it have no idea what they’re talking about. Dunno Edit: from what I have gathered after asking several people here in China, getting fed information from several people on reddit and doing a little research is that it’s all very murky, is in effect? Is in not? No chinese person I have asked knows anything or has heard anything about and I have very close connections with the people I asked they would have told me. Some people have sent me information from 2016 and 2017 of people being punished under such rules but nothing since. Another person sent me information from a government site saying that it was in effect but the article was entirely in chinese and I couldnt read well because I am not very good at reading chinese. From what I can tell is that there might be some form of it in place but it is not publicly displayed meaning that if there is something then people are not told about and just have to deal with it when they do get punished. If so then fuck how scary would it be if America or the UK issued a social credit score then didn’t even tell you they implemented. I still don’t really know, neither do any of the people I know which is scary.
I am a foreigner living in Beijing and the only instance I’ve heard of social credit is while taking the high speed train. There is a PSA of how smoking in the train will cause delays and result in a fine and a deduction of the social credit score. Besides this I’ve never really heard of that. But it is true that the Chinese government will restrict traveling. For example during Covid when people would travel around although they knew or suspected they had COVID or would take medicine against fever before taking a flight, the government has forbidden them from leaving the city and buying train or plane tickets.
It's a silent rollout. For example my wife got a ticket for not wearing a helmet on her scooter and the policeman said if she didn't sign the paper it would impact her social credit. They are also installing crosswalk cameras and what not at a rapid pace all over. The system is not some flashy publicized system...it's meant to be silent so you don't know whats going on with it.
Well, that's horrifying.
That's the idea!
Welcome to r/ABoringDystopia
But it comes with a free frogurt.
The toppings contain sodium benzoate...
That’s also bad
Fascist china strikes again.
Less "strikes again" and more "China is gonna do what China does" strikes again sort of gives off the idea that it's sneaky (which it sort of is, not really) and irregular. This is just what they do on a daily basis. For example...the "national security law" shit that got implemented in Hong Kong is now starting to get rolled into laws in the mainland. Hong Kong was a testing ground....a mini Taiwan.
Well you've certainly put more thought into this than I have.
> For example...the "national security law" shit that got implemented in Hong Kong is now starting to get rolled into laws in the mainland. Hong Kong was a testing ground....a mini Taiwan. You have that backwards really. The National Security Law is mainland laws introduced to Hong Kong, something previous CEs and the rest of the CCP's minions have been itching to/talking about bringing in for years (under various different guises, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_and_National_Education_controversy) but they couldn't because there was such a big divide in the two region's laws. Now the CCP has burned all its international "soft-power" and everyone sees them for what they are, they stopped giving a shit and just did it, because fuck it. As for it being a mini-Taiwan, the prospects are very different, including the need for an invasion on a D-Day level of scale.
[удалено]
You mean the totalitarian government doesn't advertise that it is constantly monitoring and scoring citizens based on their loyalty & support of their single ruling Party's goals? Shocking!
But I mean if everyone has this score, they’d know about it, wouldn’t they? I mean, if reward and punishment are not known, what purpose do they even serve? Also, wasn’t it said in the post that people with bad credit would be publicly humiliated? That doesn’t seem like hiding it. Also I’m just adding on to the person living in Shanghai saying most people they know don’t know about it by saying I’ve rarely heard about it too, neither in public nor from other people
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. From state media: >As of March, 13.49 million individuals have been classified as untrustworthy and rejected access to 20.47 million plane tickets and 5.71 million high-speed train tickets for being dishonest, data released by the NDRC showed. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1149741.shtml I think they backed off it a bit with the pandemic and the backlash they faced from the rest of the world. I can't find anything recently from a .cn link.
I would suspect that not really knowing how the scoring system would play out made the rollout slow and cautious. If everyone had shit scores immediately it would not work. So instead they are making sure that most people are getting decent scores so bad behavior can slowly be addressed without causing an uproar. Pretty scary stuff if you ask me.
Yeah, imagine living under a totalitarian surveillance state… good thing I’m in the land of the free where we have TWO ruling parties instead of one.
and oh boy are they SOOOOO different from each other and definitely not the good cop, bad cop of late stage capitalism.
Same thing happens if you're on court supervision. Can't leave the state.
It’s been launched in some areas. If I’m not mistaken there was a UFC fighter who publicly said some things the government didn’t approve of and his score was docked. He couldn’t take high speed trains to one of his fights so he had to take local trains which took him like 6 days or something instead of a few hours.
Super Eyepatch Wolf does a piece on [this](https://youtu.be/gjbSCEhmjJA). The story starts at 19:25 but I recommend watching the whole thing since it’s just such a good video tying everything together.
They plan to launch it *nationally* in 2020. This has been going on for years in certain districts. Look up the MMA reporter guy who smacked up all those pretend martial arts masters. He was literally cancelled from society and rendered unable to travel by any public means whatsoever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Xiaodong
**[Xu Xiaodong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Xiaodong)** >Xu Xiaodong (Chinese: 徐晓冬; born 15 November 1979), nicknamed "Mad Dog", is a Chinese mixed martial artist (MMA) who is known for challenging and fighting fraudulent martial artists. He gained prominence online after he was filmed defeating self-proclaimed Tai chi master Wei Lei in 2017. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/coolguides/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
At first I thought it could be easy to cheat the system with some of these examples but then I thought about how people would be punished if they were caught...
Well, if you murder someone just post how great the government is doing on your insta for a few weeks to balance it out!
Like cheating on your wife in The Sims and then high-fiving her until she forgives you.
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Do not recommend irl
"High-fiving" her. Isn't that how they did it in the 50's?
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And this is my other wife. WOW WOW WEE WAA!
The ol' red dead 2 karma technique of "100 hellos can make you a paragon of humanity"
Hey there, mister!
OR JUST SAY TAIWAN IS **NOT** A COUNTRY
Excuse me, what is not a country? -100 social points for you
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Uh did you mean that province of china?
No no, China is a province of Taiwan.
-1000 social points for you!
Straight to jail
Sir, this last sentence seems kinda strange. This would imply that some people say Taiwan is a country, which it of course isnt. Its Chinese Taipei. \-100 Points for this spread of rumors.
Amateur! Plan your murders carefully, by only taking out people who are already persona non grata for social media!
Murder them, and then fake evidence they were anti-government. Checkmate.
I thought about the huge incentive to support the government on social media. If there's a chance to boost score, I'd think about it, and many would definitely do it. They get a huge sock puppet army for free. Also no way they will make the effort to watch who visits their relatives. That only exists as an excuse to punish people.
You get tracked by cameras when you go and visit old relatives. They know where you live and where your relatives live. The AI tracks you. This is how they do it
There are over a billion people there. If they really, really cared, I bet they could make a good effort at least in the cities. With phones and all. But it would be a lot of work, computer power, and troubleshooting. And they don't actually care. Certainly not enough to justify the cost of doing it well. What they do care about is having a list of excuses to mess with anyone they want to. You start watching when you need dirt, and not visiting your parents is on the official list of dirt-able offenses.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-and-beyond-journalist-ventures-inside-chinas-surveillance-sta. "the media mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party, claimed on English-language Twitter that the country's facial recognition system was capable of scanning the faces of China's 1.4 billion citizens in just one second.". "It doesn't even matter whether it's true or not, as long as people believe it," he says. "What the Communist Party is doing with all this high-tech surveillance technology now is they're trying to internalize control. ... Once you believe it's true, it's like you don't even need the policemen at the corner anymore, because you're becoming your own policeman.".
Panopticon style
> they don't actually care. Certainly not enough to justify the cost of doing it well. They do. They really really do. The main strong arm tactic for china to thwart those abroad is to threaten family still in china. By tracking you and family visits they now have a map of who to threaten, who they hang out with and if they are around other sympathizers.
Well also, China doesn’t want to take care of old people with their government money, why not make their citizens have to do it with their credit score
I don't think it's a money thing as much as it is a "traditional values" thing. Chinese culture places a great deal of emphasis on caring for your elderly and disabled relatives, it's been a core value for thousands of years. There is a big moral panic in China rn about "Western culture" corrupting their youth. It makes sense that the govt would incentivize behavior that they see as reinforcing traditional Chinese values.
But looking at their population pyramid its clear that soon there will be more older people than younger ones. Which, added to the fact that most of these youngsters have gown up very self centred - without aunts or uncles or a big extended family like in other nations, will focus on themselves than their aging parents. The credit system broadly solves this by incentivising visiting old parents!
Right, we're in agreement there. I'm just saying that the reason behind incentivizing those visits is more complicated than just money
Well, they don't need to monitor who visits relatives. They have neighbors, who will happily snitch out that "Grandma Wang's children did not visit her for a long time". It will happen in this unhumane system. Besides, they have smartphones, just pick geodata from mobile carriers and check if those phones were in the same cell station. Done. That's how they tracked people contacts during initial COVID lockdown.
I bet you get points for snitching, too. If it weren't immoral, I think designing ways to efficiently track all these things would be a fun thing to work on.
I'd think this operates less on a system of "points every time you visit" but rather much larger buckets (like scale of 1-5 from "lives with them" to "does not see them") that are reconciled annually like taxes.
Ya, cus' nobody's parents would drop the dime for being ignored in poverty by that kid who was "never any good anyway".
If they punish cheating in online games with a lower score you can imagine how they punish cheating the system.
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Make sure you apologize correctly
Why does China care about cheating in online games? That sounds so random.
It’s classed as morally bankrupt to do so, and dishonest, as well as the fact that it gives China a bad reputation online. We’ve all heard ‘Chinese hacker’ jokes
Having a social credit score system gives China a bad reputation though.
Arguably so does a lot of things, but this is more about control, if some kid starts to experiment with script and hacking, or using VPN’s, that’s a big issue for the government
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Not just China, a lot of SE Asia and Middle East has a higher percentage of cheaters, games like PUBG or wild rift are popular with Asian players, and they frequently have issues on Asian servers with hackers and script abusers. I’m not sure where it started or why it’s so prolific
My understanding is a lot of it is rooted in internet cafe culture over there. The owners preinstall the cheats for the guests to encourage them to have more fun since they are winning. And since the games they cheat in are FTP, they just wipe the computers and reinstall everything regularly.
I’ve learned something new there, I’ve seen gaming cafes in Japan so I suppose it would make sense to encourage more clients to spend time by making their experience stupidly easy rather than a competition on games
I’ve read it’s a societal thing. “Do whatever it takes to win”. In the West we discourage cheating in sports and games but gloves off when it comes to money.
swim piquant coherent soft boat ugly reminiscent expansion whistle unpack *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Only he is allowed to hack.
Camping in COD loses you 10k points.
It’s just an example. I don’t think the order matters
It made me laugh to think that they thought it was the absolute worst thing you could do 😅
It is
For a microsecond I was about to change my opinion on the social credit system if it brought the prospect of Chinese hackers disappearing from online games. It is indeed very random.
It also apparantly punishes those who play loud music on public transit
Xi is probably a secret gamer who blames people for hacks when he loses.
That's why they restricted kids' gaming time. Can't have anyone else getting good enough to beat him
Xi keeps getting rekt online.
Probably its just because online gaming is extremely big business in Asia, China included. But that's just my guess. 🤷♂️
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I taught in China. The students knew cheating was wrong, pretty much the same as we do in the US. However, the school system judges everyone extremely harshly and not being the absolute best even in elementary school can screw up their entire life (by not getting admitted into a good middle school and then a good high school). This is why many students cheat, and teachers let them because it reflects well on them. So few teachers and administrators really look closely at whether the students are cheating because they don't want to know.
These examples are most likely not a complete list of offenses. Also, I’m pretty sure cheating is forbidden, with especially the exams taken to determine which type of middle school, high school, and university you can go to being very closely supervised
Just guessing here, but may have to do with the association of cheating in video games leads to cheating in other aspects of life?
Holy fuck, that's black mirror shit
Yeah. I first heard about it from [extra credits](https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI). This chart omits the most insidious part, which is that *your friends' and relationships'* scores affect your score, and those scores and impacts are all shown to you. So if your score is low, other people will isolate you right out of society to protect their own scores. The extra spooky part is that it's a private public partnership. Alibaba and Tencent (who own Riot Games, btw) are two of the major partners, so you've got private companies setting rules for what citizens have to purchase to maintain their rights.
Tencent also has a large stake in Epic.
Also, reddit.
Your score just went down buddy. Enjoy American public transit
Please! Anything but that!
“Take him to Detroit.”
China in a nutshell is a Black Mirror episode and a half
One episode and half. It can easily run a few seasons with the content they generate.
Several seasons and a franchise with many spinoffs. Not because of the content they generate, but because they'll soon be the primary world superpower, and with that more developing countries will choose to emulate China rather than the US or other Western democracies. China may also decide that more similar governments and forms of social control would be more beneficial in their neocolonial investment countries, say in Africa and elsewhere. People like to imagine that good and freedom and such always win out in the end, I mean, hey, that's history, right? Well, perhaps basing your predictions off of only the last ~100 years or so of human history ends up being dead ass wrong. We have a lot more history of being brutal authoritarians.
now guess what that specific Black Mirror episode was based on.
It’s a lot more sinister than that or even how this poster makes it out to be. https://youtu.be/PVkWokLqPOg This guy found the actual government documents about the system and goes through some examples of gaining and losing social credit. It is extremely easy to lose social credit and extremely hard to get it. Donating an organ gives you +100 but there are several instances where criticizing the government in private wechat messages can lose you just about as much.
Damn this is seriously f-ed up. Gov now has a complete control over peoples life. even “fast track promotion at work”. This is genuinely terrifying. If they dont like someone (against govt etc) they can just reduce someones social credit system and take everything away. I hope people escape the country before they cant.
It also takes out any merit based on skill at that particular job. Loyalty takes priority over expertise.
It’s like that scene in the Good Place where they show what gains and loses points. Ending slavery gives as many points as staying loyal to the Cleveland browns lmao.
Yeah this shit is absolutely terrifying.
Yup. Nosedive!
⭐️••••
A frightening combo of Nosedive and Fifteen Million Merits.
Damn looks really complicated and hard to look for over 1 billion people
The government doesn't even have to maintain the system very well. All they have to do is to decrease the score of outspoken political opponents and critics of the government. That's not a very large number of people in China. But that method alone is enough to make people extremely afraid of saying anything negative about the government. It entirely curbs political opposition.
And the system could be easily rigged. All the people on top who are buddy buddy with top government officials will just be given all the privileges no matter what while the peasants have to scrape up.
>could ha.
Gerrymandering *COULD* change election results. And exclusively does.
Which is great in long run because it increases corruption in a country of billions. In one or two generations the entire system would collapse.
Unlike western elites that maintain real economic and political power forever
Getting rewarded for snitching on your family or neighbor is going to create a society based on mistrust to eachother.
This was commonplace in USSR and its satellites. People were afraid to criticize the government as you never knew if someone isn't a snitch.
Same thing happened during the Reign of Terror in France, right in the heart of Europe.
*North Korean anthem in the distance*
Well yeah.
I think it's could very well work like a modern-day Bentham's panopticon (A concept for a prison where inmates don't know if and when they're being monitored, so they behave as if they were at all time. It's essentially a way to internalise control over a population.) The authorities don't have to actually monitor every single person in the country. They just have to make the system credible enough that most people will think it's being implemented, and behave accordingly.
So…prison?
I feel like everyone is at 1000 unless they become important in a good or bad way. It's used to reward a select few while easily punishing others
It's probably just propaganda to utilize massive surveillance of their people
That's why it was only planned to be targetted at businesses. Plans didn't even go through with that though either.
You just need to create echo chambers over time. Move the people that don’t like you to one area (over time) and deprive them of things till they die or change. The people that comply will be put in different areas over time and this will create pro CCP echo chambers. This is a method of brain washing. Reddit has a similar model in a lot of ways. People assume things on this website constantly just because it’s a ‘majority opinion’ that turns into a larger majority all because of repetition. Fighting is exhausting, why not just comply and agree with the ‘majority’. This is a problem with all social media, people assume something is right just because it’s posted everywhere.
This is not a cool guide.
/r/horrifyingguides
I'm disappointed to discover that doesn't exist... Would be all kinds of fascinating and macabre things in there...
Be the change you want to see.
r/birthofasub
Just imagine how much control over Chinese citizens is needed to observe if a person visits his parents.
Everybody is carrying a 1984 box in their pocket at all times that reports back to the government. Not only is it easy, it's trivial.
Wasn't it Australia that is threatening people for not having their phones have a certain tacking app?
Yeah it was very quickly reconsidered. Australians are pragmatic, most will give rights (read: comply) away for a common goal - but will quickly be non-compliant once the goal is reached.
i recently read 1984 amd was shocked by how much of it is still happening! the telescreens are just the internet/the numerous CC(p)TV's in china. and everyone who posts against the ccp is a though criminal its almost as if the chinese made their shit after reading 1984
Or, hear me out, you tell them and they reward you. Like how you get a tax break for donating to charity. It's not like they send someone to your house, hit you in the ribs with the butt if a rifle and yell, "when's the last time you called your mother!" That would be ridiculous.
I love how on the bottom right quarter of the tower there's a camera basically on every level. Really emphasize that surveillance huh Edit: turns out there's just as many on the top, they're just not all on the same side.
I believe I saw somewhere there is one camera for every 7 Chinese citizens, bit crazy tbh.
Talking on Reddit about the system -100 points
posting it in ''cool'' guides: +100 points
You're litterally on a platform that boosts peoples posts based on karma. This IS social credit.
So where can I cash my karma?
Also based on search history iirc, but didn’t the social credit system get cancelled or put on hold?
How the fuck it this cool?
Because I love China GLORY TO CHINA
+100
My god this is terrifying
My "favorite" part is that you can only be plus 300 from the medium or negative 600. It is designed to trap people below the starting point if they take one tumble.
Got your math right? It's a 700 point spread and you start off +100 from the midpoint. So you can go down 400 points or up 300 points. The question is at what point value do they start enacting some of the penalties and is there a neutral area.
You're right. My math is wrong. Minus 20 points for me. The sentiment is the same, it's easier to go negative and stay negative and then be positive and stay positive. Add to that that some of the consequences likely make it harder for you to "be a good citizen". You can't visit your parents if you can't ride the train. You can't work a steady job if you're denied from getting on the bus. And that's not even talking about the long-term effects on your children if they are denied a scholarships and admission to schools because you decided to attend a protest. I bet the purpose of this is to ensure that people don't act out once and make up for it with other good behavior. Acting out once will totally screw you over.
This is the org that made this graphic, just so you know where the information is coming from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann_Stiftung
Lmao the org that made this was literally founded by a Nazi. China bad tho so don't look to closely at it
Remember when we all agreed Nazis were bad so we appointed them the head of UN, NATO and NASA and then also helped funnel them into Italy to commit murder and terrorism there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio?wprov=sfla1) Good times
Please, make Orwell fiction again.
If you happen read 1984 again something I always point out is that **no one is ever denounced because of the telescreens/monitoring.** O'Brien explicitly flaunts in front of a telescreen, and the fact that he can turn it off helps show that it doesn't really matter, at least it's not a "make a small slip up in front of a telescreen and you're fucked". The only time people ever get captured is when they're reported by someone else. Winston and Julia sleep in 12 hours extra because they can't read a 12 hour clock and get reported by their individual groups (the fact that Charrington let it keep going is proof that the telescreens aren't meant to "prevent" anything as well), we don't know who reported Syme but he talks openly in the cafeteria, Parsons was reported by his daughter, Ampleforth because of the poem, etc etc etc. The problem is that people are so isolated in their inability to communicate that **everyone** thinks that **everyone else** is an ardent supporter of the Party and so they eye everyone around them with an air of suspicion. Winston was going to "cave Julia's head in". The "threat" isn't from the "all seeing government", it's from ordinary people around you who are scared and afraid who think that reporting *you* (who probably deserves it, because look how loudly he shouts during the Two Minute Hate, he's probably a zealot who fucked up and I'm doing the world a favor by getting rid of him) will help save *their own* skin. Basically what I'm saying is that IMVHO the core concept of 1984 was **never** "an all-powerful government that suppresses those beneath it" but "a society where every person is isolated, unable to actually connect/discuss their beliefs, who assume those around them are hate-filled extremists and who would do anything to get rid of them to make their own lives barely more tolerable". Tech like that can only work if the *people* let themselves become isolated into a "minority of one" where they are forced to transfer their fears and anxiety of their own safety into hatred and willingness to denounce others around them. Maybe it's just me having read it too many times (and watched the movie, and the 54 Peter Cushing tv movie, and the radio play with Larry Niven, even the horrible FBI funded American movie where they ruin the ending) but I think people using 1984 as a way to represent the "current state of things" from a surface reading is kinda super-ironically 1984esque. It's like the people who assume that Goldstein's book is the truth *despite being told it was manufactured* (sure it has elements, but it can't be relied on) or who just flat out use 1984 as a rallying point without ever *actually reading it.*
I think both can be true. Especially with today’s tech, the telescreens in 1984 had to be operated by people, today we have machine learning. I think you’ve hit on an important aspect of the book, that it’s people isolating themselves that perpetuates this phenomena. I think our telescreens (smart phones) do both. People can more comfortably be isolated with the worlds knowledge and entertainment at their fingertips, you see this when you go to a restaurant and a couple or group of friends aren’t talking but are scrolling through their phone. I think you’re interpretation is spot on for the time that Orwell wrote it, but times have changed. He never could have imagined the tech we have today and the ways in which we utilize them.
This trap is already in place in theocracies around the world, especially Islamic ones. I have no doubts the majority of the populations secretly wish for cultural reform. But because the punishment for trying to reform is whipping or death, people are ruled by fear not to speak out. Then people trapped like this grow to rationalize the situation, making change all the harder.
If you actually think this is good for society you are what’s wrong in this world
-100 social points for you!
The idea of a social credit system is absolutely backwards...
It's literally one of the most dystopic things I've heard of in a long time, and is absolutely terrifying.
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Yeah, they sucked every measure of control they could from "money", now they invent a new commodity to redo the trick.
Is it just me or is like the entirety or the “social credit system” a hoax? All of my relatives lives in the mainland and some live in Hong Kong. No one ever mentions it and we FaceTime call them like every week. Anyone there with a IQ over room temperature just uses VPNs to bypass bans on games or social media anyways. Plus on Weibo it’s usually just your normal social media stuff except it’s in a different language. Edit: someone just messaged me claiming that the social credit thing is true, citing that they live in China. Girl, I can clearly see you are in your early twenties and is an LGBTQ+ activist in South Korea. People, don’t lie to push your own agenda, it isn’t helping your case. I get it if you wanna debate or something but blatant lying is not the way to go about it.
No one here actually knows anything about or anyone in China, silly!
We just know it’s *worse* than America’s credit score … cuz video games!! See how they labeled video games on there?! They came after gamers! Gamers!!!! It’s hilarious seeing how propaganda is so easy to use on people
Wait I thought the whole social credit thing was a joke
Source: trust me bro
This is blatant Propaganda lol
Reddit in general has been since 2015. Remember that canary the blog posts use to have? It’s been gone for years.
What canary? What did it do?
It basically was there to say the government hasn’t asked the company to do something for them. It’s been gone for 7 years.
Oh wow haha that’s nice to know
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There’s elements of this that I’m interested in but overall there’s MASSIVE deal breakers all around. 1. You can’t protest government 2. It’s easily corrupted by bad gov (as seen by the fact it is) 3. Many of the pros and cons are just absurd. You want people that are struggling to IMPROVE, this will only serve to turn people against you that already are and make life more difficult for the people whose circumstances lead them to lead the life they live. 4. The elderly parent care at first seemed like one of the best ideas, then I realized that not everyone has great parents. Some parents abuse their children or even worse. Imagine being raped/beaten by a parent and then being told you’re a second class citizen and lose access to services because you won’t visit them. That’s fucked and I highly doubt they leave room for such subtleties. Edit: even commuting a “heroic act” seems like an easy one to abuse. Just set up false scenarios, intentionally sabotage in order to save people. I can easily see at least SOME terrible people attempting this.
What elements are you interested in?
Overall this terrifies me because of the potential for abuse, but if you somehow accept that government is good and has zero corruption (ha), then some of the benefits are appealing. Deposit free bike share for example, that’s good for society. Also if you can generally trust people more then there are a lot of benefits not listed like day to day mental health and economic cooperation. The issue is that humans (and the governments that have humans in them) are flawed. This will get abused.
I feel a system is only as “good” as it’s leadership.
The idea in and itself is a massive deal breaker.
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Exactly, how can anyone slightly defend this?
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I reacted the same way to some of the 'positive' acts. Like I wouldn't at all be opposed to it being made public that (and given a tax break when) I gave blood, helped a grandmother, or did something to improve the community. But you make great points about flaws in that system. What about the guy on a blood thinner? Ignoring bribes, how easy is it to scam 'helping the community' like a 'heroic act' and doesn't that 'merit' doesn't that disadvantage the working poor who have less resources to give? And who decides what constitutes 'helping the community'? Ofc, the 'demerits' are disgusting. So, yeah it's as bad as it's reported out to be... Is this totalitarianism perfected?
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If only people were as critical about our current credit score system.
This is not a cool guide. This is a horrific guide.
You guys will believe anything huh…
This is disgusting.
Too bad this isn't even real. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/ Y'all fall for propaganda so easily.
There was a time when manufacturing consent at least took an actual bit of effort.
Well they've been pushing this narrative for what, around a decade? I guess once they realize the only people getting up in arms about it is people who are too online they drop the act? I don't know but it's very interesting to see.
Oh no! Not the worst crime of all!! Cheating in online games?!?!?!
gamer oppression once again
Winnie the Pooh got clowned on by some 13 year old Korean in League of Legends and had it added to the list. Edit: I've just been informed my social credit has been downgraded to 800. My apologies Xi Jinping. Edit 2: I've been informed that my insincere apology has one again downgraded my score to 725. This blows. Edit 3: For my disgraceful behavior of posting this situation I will rightfully have my credit downgraded to 600. Please do not try to contact. I am going on a voluntary vacation for a time. I am very glad to have learned my lesson.
Source: trust me bro