Coming soon: America’s own social credit system | Hacker News Reader

Coming soon: America’s own social credit system

thehill.com

38 pointsTycho63 comments

The irony is so thick, it is palpable. Leftist politics suggest that criminals should have a second chance and be able to reintegrate into society. But do something completely legal that I don't like, and you're cancelled forever.

There is likely a substantial part of that cohort that would like to change that to make racist speech be explicity illegal.

You all keep calling things being cancelled when they're just plain old social ostracism of the past. Why can't you all just admit you don't like it when someone else does the social ostracizing instead of giving it a new fancy word to distance yourselves from the same behavior you all do?

Ostracism was democratic process, there was a vote and majority decided. "Cancellation" is nothing like that.

That's completely wrong. How is it democratic or anti when people online choose to not associate with you? Is it when they do it on a social media platform? When they make a hashtag or group? Again, that's more spontaneous action that no one has any legal nor moral authority to stop. Next, you'll tell me it's okay for evangelicals to boycott of some company that visibly supports LGBT rights then tell me it's bad when some random kids just mocking and jeering someone else online.

>Ostracism was democratic process

Please go on? If people want to "cancel", even if I think they are doing it for a bad reason or mislead then that's their right. Why is it such a big issue?

How is the 'cancellation' any less democratic?

It seems more democratic than a majority deciding for everyone, if each person decides for themselves whether to avoid or not.

Cancellation suffers from social pressure. If the mob cancelled someone then you have to, too, otherwise you're canceled next.

At least with a ballot, your vote is a secret.

A mob has a reverse synergy: the more it grows, the lower their common sense, until they can't regulate themselves. At least democracy tries to put some balances to prevent runaway demagogy.

Viral ostracism is quite different from the local-scale shunning of the past. Having a torrent of people shunning you for someone disagreeing with you is unjust.

Well too bad, it's totally legal, normal, and part of human society. Now if you want to talk about the effects like blackballing/listing and other things that ought to be banned then I'm all ears. But if you're going to start forcing association between private individuals and private groups then you're gonna have to show me case law that says people gotta associate with each other. It's like saying that folks gotta associate with racists in their families just cause.

Also, I'm all ears on abolishing at-will (so-called right to work) employment laws. If you abolish the laws that make social ostracism through social media so bad then it don't really do much. Plus, I've yet to see a celebrity that's been 'cancelled' actually physically or psychologically suffer. The worse I've seen is Alan Dershowitz not being invited to some old friend's dinner parties in Martha's Vineyard (how horrible! /s).

"Having a torrent of people shunning you for someone disagreeing with you" is the same reductionist self-pity that people have used for ages to defend themselves from ostracism, which may be just or unjust, more subjectively or less subjectively. Sure, the internet amplified it, like everything else with a social component, but I think you're wrong to imply they are qualitatively different.

Quantatively is the difference. Reasonable or not, the more people agree on something, the more it tends to be viewed as true.

If scale doesn't matter, then there is no difference between individual officers observing a person of interest and a city-wide network of traffic cameras observing that person.

Hopefully you can now see why your objection is weak.

Should I take this comment to mean that you are not against the sort of blackballing that happens to people with criminal histories? I mean, it's just social ostracism, right? Why would we have a problem with people not being able to find a place to live or work?

You should read my other comments. But for clarity sake, no I don't support blackballing, at-will employment, and the like. I just want to point out that supposed cancelling hasn't done a blessed thing in the instances that celebrities who say actual bad things publicly. The closest thing I can recall that cancelling has done anything is what happened to James Gunn and Kathy Griffin for their supposed misdeeds (cringe-worthy nonsense but nothing I'd care about even in the worse of times). But over all supposed cancel culture hasn't done much other than annoy celebs who are chronically online (they need to get use to the jeering in the peanut gallery rather than pretend that social media is a polite society).

> I just want to point out that supposed cancelling hasn't done a blessed thing in the instances that celebrities who say actual bad things publicly.

Huh?! Gina Carano was fired by Disney earlier this year because she had the audacity to draw a parallel between today's political vitriol and the Holocaust [1]. This happened precisely because of the power of the current outrage mob.

If you don't see the effects that the outrage mob is having on the rest of us, it's because you aren't looking [2].

[1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supernumberfireginac...

[2]: https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-th...

Gina Carano was fired because it was a gross and offensive parallel to make that republicans of today are treated anywhere nearly as wrongly as Jewish people in Nazi Germany. There is a nuance.

This also says nothing of Gina Carano's history of transphobic comments, which Disney didn't care about because they didn't make as much press but still says much about her character.

> Gina Carano was fired because it was a gross and offensive parallel to make

So you think it is OK for employers to enforce conformity of thought? I suppose that _your_ thoughts will never become problematic, right?

> republicans of today are treated anywhere nearly as wrongly as Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

The point isn't that they are. The point is that _this is where it starts_. It's a warning about where we're going if political vitriol continues. Perhaps review the ten stages of genocide [1] and see if you can draw any parallels.

> This also says nothing of Gina Carano's history of transphobic comments

What specific things did she say that were "transphobic"?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_stages_of_genocide

Is Gina homeless as a result of such action? She seems to be quite fine to me. I don't weep for the rich.

What about the dude who was fired for Tweeting about the efficacy of nonviolent protests or the reporter who was pushed out because he interviewed a black person with opinions that his employer/colleagues didn’t feel black people should have? Or the professor suspended for using a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like an English slur? Or the utility company employee who was canned for accidentally making the “ok” gesture? Or the kid who was accosted by a group of black nationalists and subjected to defamation by every media outlet in the country to the effect that he received death threats and threats of violence even from celebrities? These are literally just examples off the top of my head, but I can go on.

Concerted campaigns to discredit someone for mundane “offenses” (which are well within the overton window) especially by coercing employers to terminate the target is not “plain social ostracism” and indeed the people who engaged in this in the past were themselves socially ostracized for their bad behavior.

To be clear, we’re talking about signing a letter endorsing free-speech ideals or Tweeting research on the efficacy of non-violent protest or saying a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like a racial slur.

Further, the term “cancelled” is not a term that the critics of cancel culture invented, but rather it was invented by the early participants of cancel culture.

It seems so obvious that cancel culture and social ostracism are different things that I don’t understand how anyone could confuse them in good faith.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

The irony is so thick, it is palpable. Rightist politics suggest that criminals should be locked away and have their right to reintegrate into society stripped when they are let out. But if there are social consequences to my actions, it's because of cancel culture.

As an independent, I am horrified by the behavior of both leftists and rightists. You all have lost your damn mind.

LGBT has become a religion now honestly when the fact that celebrities come out it's marked on their wikipedia page as though it's somehow worth mentioning. The fact that "coming out" has blown up beyond what it was has absolutely turned it into cult status since people can be fired or threatened to be fired for "assuming gender" and that nonsense. The simple fact that you can't dislike some of these people, especially since many do have severe mental illness issues they have not worked out, states it's a religion. You can't publicly condemn Christianity in the US, likewise, you can't publicly condemn LGBT groups.

You can choose to be Christian or not, you can not choose to be gay or not, and someone asking you to use their preferred pronouns is not nonsense, and getting fired for showing rampant disrespect towards your peers based on them simply existing seems fair to me.

What happened to hckrnews in the last few years, I'm seeing more and more of this kind of BS.

> Lunagender, also called monagender, monegender, or selenogender (all of which mean in some way "moon gender"), is a fluid gender identity that changes on a consistent, orderly cycle, reminding one of a lunar cycle.

Not nonsense eh?

This is cherry-picked/extreme. Besides, it doesn't appear relevant if you intended to actually address what the parent referred to as "not nonsense" in the general sense. It's not relevant to what the GP was saying, either.

Explain to me how bisexual is not a choice.

You can very much self identitfy with the now uncountable amounts of genders, pronouns, and cases of mental illness misdiagnosed as LGBT nowadays. I'm not saying gay people choose whom they are attracted to. I get that and I truly believe it. But when people identify as queer, bi, asexual (even though they have sex lol) then its something you're opting into. Clear as day seeing as these people can fluctuate their feelings on a whim.

I know you didn't claim otherwise, but it's important to remember that one can be horrified by the behavior of people on the left and right as a person on the left or right.

You're asserting that those two things are ironic/opposite/hypocritical, but you haven't explained why. Legal consequences and social consequences can't serve the same seat in an analogy without some serious explanation.

They're both social consequences. Criminals who have served their time and are released often have a lot of trouble finding work or renting because of their criminal history. Liberal people often decry this as unjust.

So now we're looking at doing the same thing, but to people who have never been given any sort of due process. And somehow _that_ is okay?

"criminals should have a second chance and be able to reintegrate into society"

Is this not part of the definition of justice? Most crimes (high and low) only required some form of punishment and perhaps reform. After the balance has been restored why wouldnt those people fully reintegrate?

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

The funny thing is that those who keep calling social ostracism cancel culture would probably be opposed to any kind of reintegration of people who have served their time. How many of them would praise George Zimmer's position of giving ex-cons a second chance at employment? I ask this in a rhetorical fashion obviously but it's important since cancel culture or social ostracism is as old as humankind. So in my view, the real problem isn't cancel culture, the problem is that we don't actually have a society that forgives. The Internet just put all that within reach of our fingertips. In the past, it was only the rich or powerful that could wield such control of in/out group action. Today, anyone can game trending algorithms on social media even though our laws have yet to catch up to that fact.

If there's anything that can be said it's this: our society needs to stop being vengeful, starting with our legal system. We need to repeal at-will employment or at least reform it. We need to actually support re-integration of ex-convicts as a side issue. And we need to stop being so chronically online.

I didn't say criminals being able to reintegrate was a bad thing. I'm simply pointing out the apparent double-think here.

Limitation on legal punishment is one of the critical foundations of any society that could be defined as civilized, so I have trouble agreeing that the morality or consequences of people supporting specifically unjust instances of social shunning begins to approach that, even giving you all the benefit of doubt within reason as to what qualifies as "unjust".

The only reason a site originally intended to share photos can ‘cancel’ anyone is because right wing politics allow these companies to grow out of control.

Strange game. The only way to win is not to play. Post something today that is acceptable and the powers that be decide tomorrow that it is offensive and your life is ruined.

The true irony is this type of behavior is what drives people to be even more conservative. Why be open or have fun (even if it's krass at the time, naively unaware it could be bad in the future). So now people who aren't bleeding hearts will more than likely only post content that is generic. Then all the bleeding hearts will complain nobody is willing to stand up for justice when these very people are the same ones that incite witch hunts for minor offenses.

That will end up killing the platform. No one wants a feed of gray rocks and witch hunting.

Next, couple it with more taxes that everyone must pay or your score is ruined (kinda like not paying the broadcasting fee or public transport fares in Germany) and you've got yourself a gravy train. What are they gonna do, shoot you?

FYI, you're already supposed to pay all your taxes, and not doing so is already a crime.

Digging through the rhetoric, it seems they're complaining that companies are exercising their freedom of association to not associate with people who storm congress?

Amazing that you can write an article like this and not even discuss antitrust, opting instead to hand-wring over leftist politics and free speech.

A handful of mega-corporations have essentially complete control over the average person's ability to navigate modern life? Clearly the issue is cancel culture (or is it socialism? or leftism in general? the article isn't really clear what we should be pushing back against)

This doesn't seem avoidable to me.

At some point, we all have to make a decision whether to buy into the brave new world or to separate from it.

I guess that's the real value of Trump. It was essentially an unremarkable Presidency but a whole lot of cards got turned face up.

Slippery slope is often a logical fallacy.

I'm excited for accountability to catch up to the Internet, for far too long people have been able to poison the well. Now, when you say something, you have to stand by it.

This is a good thing, and I hope more things like this come soon.

"say something, you have to stand by it." is great when it's against people you don't like.

Just don't complain when it comes after you.

Employers and social police be aware that TameAntelope has stated in previous comments: "I'm actually pretty terrible at learning new things." Don't expect him to learn new social rules or new skills very easily. Low social credit points here.

-10 to TameAntelope's social credit score

They are now below the cutoff point and no longer have access to public transport or certain dining establishments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-p...

For what it's worth, I would and do say that professionally (I haven't been interviewed in many years), so there's generally no need to make it seem like I wouldn't want some people to know that!

…until the woke mob shifts in a direction you didn’t anticipate and people are calling for your head, asking you to be “accountable” for something you said 10 years ago.

Now, when you say something, you have to stand by it.

Honestly why? I've said a lot of things in my youth that I don't stand by any more. Surely there must be room for people to grow and mature.

I agree. I said something a couple of weeks ago that I no longer agree with and I am in my 40s. My mind can be changed, I see that as a positive.

Of course, I completely agree. I don't see how what I wrote contradicts that.

Why do you not use your real name to post this?

Because I'd like to advocate for a world I want to live in without pretending I already live in that world.

I don't want to hide behind anonymity, but that's how society is currently structured, and if I don't, there are still levers assholes can (and have) pull (ed) to make my life harder. If everyone were accountable, and not just me, that better world would be possible.

> I'm excited for accountability to catch up to the Internet, for far too long people have been able to poison the well. Now, when you say something, you have to stand by it.

The fact that you aren't using your real name here is a source of real amusement. Thanks for the laugh with my morning coffee.

what's your name, what town do you live in, and who is your employer?

So what happens to a persons social credit when they prepped for this situation, and then when their score tanked then go and perform a mass shooting at the building of the people who score them?

This creates a system of people who numerically can identify they have absolutely nothing left to lose.

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