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Comment by pszndr | Hacker News Reader

"rate its citizens": The 'that black mirror episode!' clickbait

"The Chinese government plans to launch its Social Credit System in 2020. The aim? To judge the trustworthiness – or otherwise – of its 1.3 billion residents": The more accurate subtitle, which you can now see since you gave us your click. Gotcha!

Credit rating is nothing new, be it for people, corporations or even countries.

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This is much, much more than a credit score, and it is disingenuous to claim otherwise.

FTA:

“Friends matter, too. The fifth category is interpersonal relationships. What does their choice of online friends and their interactions say about the person being assessed? Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.”

the goal is to promote isolating and ostracizing dissidents since having one in your circles influences your rating... the goal basically is self censorship at massicve scale and unprecedented granularity. stop circulating certain ideas even offline.

True, but you don't get dings to your credit rating for insulting the current regime.

Yet.

Credit rating is nothing new, be it for people, corporations or even countries

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbun

I learned something. Thanks. Was there a similar system in East Germany and elsewhere or is this uniquely North Korean?

I think the level of stratification is unique to North Korea. They did this with a traditional bureaucracy too. Imagine what they could do with modern tech. Well, that's what China will do...

...and maybe NK too

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