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Comment by cygx | Hacker News Reader

if anything worse, since at least you can see your "social credit" score

Travel restrictions or ineligibiliy for universities. Public shaming via automated voice messages or displays, denouncing you as dishonest. You don't think that's worse?

Also note that in Germany, the right to be informed about any data companies may have on you has been law for a while. The EU-wide General Data Protection Regulation becomes enforceable next week.

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Ineligibility for universities for opaque reasons happens in the west too. So does unaccountable public shaming - I don't think it being done manually rather than automatically makes it better. Knowing what information companies have on you doesn't actually help any - it means you know the inputs to their model, but not how they relate to the output.

Freedom of movement and GDPR are good things. The EU is not (yet) China. But the social credit score is not the bogeyman people make it out to be - or, to the extent that it is, it's already here.

> Ineligibility for universities for opaque reasons happens in the west too. So does unaccountable public shaming - I don't think it being done manually rather than automatically makes it better. Knowing what information companies have on you doesn't actually help any - it means you know the inputs to their model, but not how they relate to the output.

In the West, are those things engineered by the government on a mass scale to coerce political support for the regime and silence dissent?

No, on the whole. There is no grand conspiracy, just a lot of people looking for a quiet life, avoiding rocking the boat, and slightly favouring people like themselves. But the end result is almost the same.

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