Hacker News Reader

Comment by soneil | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely curious to see how this works out. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm not part of it - but I can't help be fascinated.

Growing up, we cared what the neighbours thought. They were our "social score". If we skipped school, it'd be noticed. If we misbehaved, they knew it. And little old ladies ensured bad news travelled faster that twitter.

Now life feels anonymous, and it feels like this has been lost. Anonymity, while sometimes valuable, often leads to toxic behaviour online. A lot of things we'd never have dreamt of doing with the 'old lady brigade' judging us. And now the real world feels much more anonymous, and I fear the same happening here too.

On the face of it, it seems like China have figured out how to scale the little old ladies. This could be horribly interesting, or simply horrible. But I think I'm glad to see someone (else) give it a shot.

View on HN

I can’t understand why anybody would be glad. People in China will have their lives ruined by this. This kind of thing has been bad when any previous authoritarian regime did it. So tracking/controlling people doesn’t just become okay or potentially good because you’re using computers. The Stasi etc would’ve loved this.

As a Chinese citizen who lived in the US for a while, I'm totally in favor of this, and especially when I go back to China. We don't value "freedom" as much as most westerners, and the social credit system is there to make existing laws better enforced, so bad actors can really get punished as they should.

There are hundreds of thousands currently sitting (possibly dying) in "reeducation camps" in Xinjiang, I guess they don't value "freedom" either. The social credit system is just a continuation of the current authoritarian controls, and will be used to further chill any chance of dissenting opinion. This might be fine to you individually if you find yourself on the right side of everything, but clearly not everyone does.

Well, probably not for them if they actually exists.

I don't find myself on the right of everything, I also don't do stuff that's breaking the laws. I'm in favor since I believe the system has more benefit than its downside. Credit system provided by private companies just won't work as much.

Replace "reeducation camps in Xinjiang" with "projects in Philadelphia" and "social credit system" with "private credit ratings" and you see that we're not as unlike as we thought. Yes, the scope and severity of the situation is more blatant in the Chinese example, but pointing fingers overlooks that we have similar problems brought about by similar causes in the West. Moreover, we already have these systems in place, and we treat them like oracles. How many poor in the West will never get a chance to be anything else because they get stuck in a system that only sees them as an unnecessary risk? I'm not claiming either system is good or bad. I'm saying both systems are similar and will have similar benefits and pitfalls.

I would ask Westerners to look long and hard at our financial credit systems and ask whether they allow dissent or whether we have simply accepted that dissent is a largely fruitless endeavor.

Whoa whoa whoa, just because both systems have problems and have some similarities doesn't mean no one can complain. I'm not gonna defend the US's problems because it doesn't matter! It's easy to see the Chinese system as morally bad. Why? Because free speech and dissent are the mechanisms by which we improve our ideas and systems. This social credit system backed by the already authoritarian government will further cement the will of the party powers over the will of the people. And everyone should care about a billion people.

We're agreeing. My point is that we should care about a billion people in China and a billion people in the West and billions everywhere. You're right that free speech and dissent are how we make change. I'm questioning the Western perspective because it seems like free speech and dissent are reaching limits as well. Dissent as you like, it probably won't work, and you'll probably suffer consequences in the commercial sphere, albeit not formally in the political or national spheres. We should keep complaining until it gets better. I just wonder if the complaints ever get heard in good faith.

While bad actors being punished is important, there is a constant trade-off for ensuring good actors aren't punished. Ideas like trial by jury and innocent until proven guilty try to address this because the judge of good and bad is essential. I assume you don't see government dissent as bad, because social credit and constant surveillance will discourage and punish these good actors. And with a system like this setup, more nefarious, corrupt, and oppressive uses could occur eventually. And with China known for its corruption and brutal authority, I am surprised you are so confident the government won't continuously abuse this power if not now than in the future.

Every system we've come up with has winners and losers. Sad but true.

But basically I don't believe we're on a healthy path at the moment. While I don't think this system would work for us either, from a purely nerd standpoint it's interesting to see some experimentation. Whether it works or not, we can learn something from it either way.

You can just watch that Black Mirror episode. Well, all of them, I guess. Things don't go well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com