At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges | Hacker News Reader

At China’s Internet Conference, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges

nytimes.com

64 pointsihsoj42 comments

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Surprised social credit isn't mentioned, it's incredibly dark and creepy concept.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/10/09/655921710/chin...

Social credit is a collection of policies, not strictly technological.

I wrote a post that goes through the main points of the official social credit document:

https://paraditedc.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/pdc-2-social-cre...

It's very creepy indeed, although not sure how dark it is, relatively speaking.

If you've ever lived in a developing country for long enough, often you've thought "I wish people had some incentive to think about my safety/comfort, not just their own". Because they don't have that incentive, and for individuals there's no social pressure to think of "public" comfort.

Priorities are:

1. family

2. myself

3. friends

4. people who may recognize me on the street

The solution might be better education in school and through social programs, to build in a civic-minded or public-minded consciousness.

But the shortcut seems to be, "if you're a lousy member of society, we'll curb your social freedoms and put you on a list".

Is that creepy in the sense that it's invasive and "nanny state/big brother"? Absolutely.

Is that dark? Well it has to be weighed against the darkness of kids growing up in a society in which life is cheap, OSHA is an incomprehensible joke, and "me-first" is the only driving force for the average person on the street. That's pretty dark too.

Who decides the rules you need to follow?

That is the darkness.

That's the philosophical/political question at the heart of this.

Although personally if whoever decides the rules is preventing people from running me over on the sidewalk, preventing smoking in my face while I wash my hands in the restroom, and taking businesses to task for scamming me, then... the darkness isn't that dark.

I'd have to balance that against the over-reach of government indoctrination and blocking access to information.

After enough times nearly being killed by an idiot on a motorbike, it's a genuine mental balancing act.

> the darkness isn't that dark.

Give it a few years. Or read a history book if you are impatient.

It depends, right? Honneker vs the Kim dictatorship in N Korea. Honecker led to people “telling” on each other for gain (making stuff up to advance or get rid of a rival) but it wasn’t do much gulags. North Korea was/id diffetent. It’s there to repress and keep the status quo, nothing else. It’s very repressive.

So, ond can be like Singapore today, another can be like Venezuela today. Depends on the govt and whether it responds to its constituency.

It’s not a competition, it’s an inevitability. You don’t want to roll dice every 4 years when losing equals industrialised genocide.

Better to not have those systems in place.

Any you don’t think the way to solve this is to build better social and cultural institutions instead of throwing surveillance technology at the problem? Terrible ideas are rarely created ex nihilo, they almost always arise as a response to a legitimate problem and justified by the presence of the problem and not their results.

Makes me think of an episode in the TV series black mirror: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/

I don't see it. In that episode, people are rated by other people. That makes things a popularity contest. Seems more of a satire on the state of democracies and voting for the popular person.

In China, the proposal is that people will be given credit scores by the government based on a set of laws and criteria. In this case, it would not be subject to the whims of mob rule.

"The company has also started working with the authorities in Xinjiang, Mr. Wang said. The goal? To have a database of the irises of all Xinjiang residents within two years, he said."

But, what is the actual goal of that? How will that be used?

For one not too nice possibility, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

Organizations like the Stasi would've loved to have existed in this current era. Things people put out in the open voluntarily are things probably would've taken so many resources to obtain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Tiananmen_Square_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianjin_Airlines_Flight_7554

happy to see there is no more such incident in the last two years.

Putting people in reeducation camps guarantees more incidents like this.

Interestingly, China's President was also sent to a reeducation camp in the 70s for 6 years and now he is the most powerful person in China.

Do you have any statistics, theories or anecdotes to support your claim?

Afaik, Chinese government had a track record of achieving what they want. If counterterrorism is one of the goals of such program, I would predict positive results, i.e. less violence in the region.

Are you really sure you want to play this game? Because, while you put the victims of terrorist attacks on your side of the scale I'll go ahead and put the millions of Uighurs who lose basic human rights, hundreds of thousands of which have been imprisoned without a trial, on the other side.

This article only hints about the dark side of tech - adds nothing new.

Its main points are more about american/chinese politics than tech.

I think it's a good piece because it highlights that tech doesn't exist in a vacuum, and neither does ethical discussions. Engineers like to abstract things, such as just solving the problem of recognizing people based on their irises. But, when politics change I think you should reflect on who your customer is.

>Engineers like to abstract things, such as just solving the problem of recognizing people based on their irises. But, when politics change I think you should reflect on who your customer is.

Engineers should be educated enough to know the consequences of such technologies.

They are, they might just be in denial over how active their own role is.

Sadly they will find a group of engineers to do this and more. Even if they break the tech into innocent looking parts and then unite it into e finished nightmare products.

I was also surprised by the vacuity of the article

At AWS Rekognition Event, a Darker Side of Tech Emerges

Maybe they'll fix fake news, I'm assuming they have them too.

China-bashing is getting really tiring.

There are as many companies working on these technologies in the West as in China.

You're right, the West is also working on the technologies discussed in the article, like Internet monitoring and facial/gait recognition, and people are concerned about that too. But the West doesn't have a President for life, forced reeducation of Muslims, social credit, a Great Firewall, etc.

Technology's potential to empower tyrants is even more frightening in a society already on the verge of tyranny.

This is China-bashing on the same level as during the 1950s, except that the racist aspect cannot be explicit anymore, and you're just repeating the official line that you've heard in the media.

Are you claiming that the "official line" is false? China doesn't censor the Internet, Xi Jinping isn't President for life, China isn't developing social credit or internment camps?

Because if you're not saying that, if you don't have evidence that the "official line" is false, then I am concerned for the future well-being of the Chinese people. I'm not "bashing" them. I'm only "bashing" the Chinese government.

I believe that the Chinese people are perfectly able to take care of themselves and do not need others to pretend to care.

Were murdered dissidents "perfectly able to take care of themselves"? I believe they could have used some help.

I'm not sure how to effectively help them short of starting WW III, but speaking against China's policies and refusing to help the Chinese government is a start.

Call that "China bashing" if you will but in America "bashing" government is an honored tradition.

I'm Swedish, and one of my country men with dual citizenship is imprisoned in China without a trial after being taken from Thailand. His daughter is still in Sweden fighting to get him out through the Foreign Office. The argument that we should just leave the Chinese to themselves goes right out of the window once Swedes too run the risk of being abducted while on vacation and then being imprisoned without a trial.

The things leereeves mentions are objectively, verifiably happening. You're just repeating an official line that you've heard in offically-sponsored media. Look around. There is evidence if you look.

You're missing the point that even it these things are happening there is no need to repeat it again and again every time China is mentioned, and to comment on anything Chinese through that prism. That is what discloses the real motive: China-bashing.

Most political news and discussion on the Internet is bashing government. China isn't being singled out.

How much praise of the US government do you see in the news? How much criticism?

This article wasn't about some new film in China and jerks started interjecting with off topic issues. This article is literally about an Internet conference and the police state tech demos there.

Like most countries, there's much more to love about China than their government. It's a beautiful, amazing place and people. But, like most countries, their government is often a piece of shit.

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