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Comment by veza | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I love the 2 sides of HN... Here everybody's ready to buy a BYD and even move to China, due to the sheer quality of the product (for the money) and the integrity of the people, totally forgetting about the 'social credit system' and the data that these cars might be sending or being exposed to having the car remotely disabled. Not to mention the repairability... Just a few days ago there was a popular post taking a modem out of the RAV4. Bet you can't do even that on a BYD without rendering the car non-functional.

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That pot&kettle contest between the US and China is really heating up!

You might want to switch from "social credit" (which was a failed local project from over a decade ago) to "blacklist", or just criticize the overall surveillance system, which is pretty invasive.

I'm getting a bit tired of people posting on social media websites and then pretending they are not a part of them. "Reddit" did this, "HN" did that... let's just admit that we're all chronically online people who get irritated whenever we stumble out of our bubble and more than one person dares to disagree with us.

> totally forgetting about the 'social credit system' and the data that these cars might be sending or being exposed to having the car remotely disabled.

No problem with building the same surveillance state at home though right? At least China's on the way up while the US is slowly declining on virtually every aspects.

American companies have been harvesting my data for 20 years, why wouldn't I give some to China? I interact with 0 chinese software in my day to day but dozens of american companies are harvesting and targeting me every single day since I started using internet.

The free market isn't fun when you're not the ones making all the money and dominating countries you determine to be inferior?

I really don’t understand why this social credit concept has become so widespread. It does sort of exist but not in the big government breathing down your neck kind of way.

Here’s an example - you can rent e-bikes and power banks at low cost, they are everywhere. If you don’t return an e-bike or power bank after using it, not only will that company charge you, but you’ll likely get blacklisted from renting more, even at other companies.

This is a good thing, no???

Feels like its the same poeple saying locked down OS stores are great because security and chrome engine in all browser is fantastic because then everything is standardized.

But worse because here we are talking deep human topics.

Such long period of peace made people forget about how the world work. And clearly studing history in school ks not working. I guess in the US they are getting a new shot right now to remember.

Well it depends what legal protections are there to back it up. If you get threatened with blacklisting without recourse, that seems like a bad thing.

That sounds awful. What if you have a dispute and they're the ones in the wrong? You can no longer just take your business elsewhere.

understandable that people might have fears like this since this happens a lot in the west in my own experience, but in china you can always argue with them and the customer service is usually way better, or you can drop the nuke by reporting to the authorities.

Well then we can unpack US and all the crap thats happening there. From an outsider, there ain't much difference China vs US, just different shades of brown. Comparing those 2, China is definitely more friendly to Europe, US gov publicly stated they want to break EU and make continent weaker FFS.

Nobody is moving to China just because they make good cars now, I have never seen anybody stating that so no idea why the hyperbole. But good (enough) cars they do make and various other products, ignoring facts ain't a smart move in any case.

Removing modem may kill new BMW as well as new Chevrolet and so on, so that argument is... weird. Expect more integration and dependence on online, like it or not. Repairability goes against primary incentives of all car manufacturers, they get significant revenue from official repair shops, often more than from sales themselves. Definitely true for that BMW, have a friend quite high in their sales team in Munich and he stated that few times.

Isn't the social credit system mostly a credit score, similar to the one implemented in the United States? As someone living in a European country without such a thing, I also find that one pretty dystopian.

About the data sending, wasn't there a quite recent incident where an American car manufacturer was leaking the real-time position of all their clients' vehicles? Aren't US telecoms selling position data of their clients? Isn't the US filled with surveillance cameras managed by a private company keeping track of every car?

Do you base your last statement on anything, or is it just a hunch?

No, the social credit system can restrict your basic freedom, including the freedom of moving, without a judge being involved.

The fact you are casually talking about it is infuriating.

It's like taking about the yellow star and stay "isn't it like the pins in the US".

I see, thanks for the correction. Aren't people put in ICE detention centers and offshore prisons indefinitely with no charges and no judge involved, though? Or is that OK because they aren't citizens?

I'm not American. And the discussion is about the credit score system.

We were discussing cancer, and instead of talking about it, you tried to avoid saying bad things about it and answered "isn't diabetes bad as well?".

I assume now you are a China propaganda account and will stop answering to you.

The discussion was actually about privacy and human rights concerns when moving from western manufacturers to Chinese ones.

Nothing can restrict your basic freedom in the US though, right? lmao

American believing in the most base propaganda regurgitated by their government for the last 50 years is the funniest shit ever. You're implementing the same thing at home right now, not even secretly, and there is not a single protest, nothing...

If americans were 25% as critical with themselves as they are with China... Flock cameras, Palantir, 48 hours ago, one of trump's best friend:

> Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on"

I'm not American, and my answer solely focuses on the fact the social credit score is the most dystopian thing ever created by modern dictatorship.

Which is an answer to guy saying people idealize china these days, thanks to effective propaganda from the regime.

Want to criticize the US? Go for it. That's just not the topic.

And until you can wear a Tiananmen Square t-shirt in a public street in Beijin, any good thing China is doing is moot for its population. It's still in a dictatorship.

From what I read it's mostly a credit score and blacklist system. In the 2010s there was a project to use it to reward and punish people for some everyday stuff based on whether it did or didn't align with the party's morals, but it got scrapped. That's the part everyone thinks is going on over there.

I agree it's dystopian, but I live in Germany and we have a similar thing called "Schufa". For most people it mostly means that if they default on a credit, they'll be less likely to find an apartment. It differs from the US one in the sense that banks don't require you to get into debt before they trust you, that whole "build your credit score" nonsense.

> wasn't there a quite recent incident where an American car manufacturer was leaking the real-time position of all their clients' vehicles?

You might be thinking about GM:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/...

What country do you live in? They probably have credit records. Here in Finland you definitely do. They don't break it down into a single score, but lenders can see how many debts you've defaulted on in the past.

https://www.oikeuspalveluvirasto.fi/en/financial-and-debt-co...

Not social credit score, this is something different.

Yes, it is a literal credit score, which the grandparent comment claimed doesn't exist in "a European country".

Social credit score affects all your actions as a citizen, and can restrict your liberty as a citizen. E.G: a cop don't like you because you sleep with his sister, they charge you on false pretense, and now your internet is more restricted or you can't take some trains.

Banking credit score only affect your ability to get a loan. You sleep with a banker sister, and... they can't do shit because there is no money trail and you can apply for a loan elsewhere. You will only be rejected for a loan if fail to pay some of your existing loans. Reasonable.

It would be naive to think HN is not immune to influence operations. The people singing praises to China are not necessarily people.

Even more naive to think that the HN crowd is any more immune to propaganda than the non-HN folk.

They are probably people, paid for it. The comment are too well made.

But also some are just real people from HN that are the worst kind of dumb : uneducated but smart, so they think their opinion is valid.

This is where the "history at schoolis useless" people show their true color.

lol, every single american repeating "ChInA bAd" on every single thread mentioning china like automatons, while not being able to locate it on a map or name three living Chinese people", and having the audacity to talk about being under "influence"... the irony

China's living rent free in your collective mind for 50+ years while they just chug along and slowly catches and surpasses you in most aspects.

If you don't want the car to be sending data, you can remove the SIM from under the armrest.

I frankly could not give less of a fuck about China spying on me. Spy away. At least they don't communicate their findings with my government. What I do care about is my own government spying on me, or domestic companies spying on me and selling that information to my government.

The "Two sides" you're spotting is US posters vs non US posters. It's not exactly a secret that the US has long had a propaganda process going against China with their own citizens. From the outside it's weird how 'cult like' some parts of the US education system come across with things like this. It's similar to the whole socialism = communism = bad fear embedded into US society.

The US obviously isn't the only one guilty of this kind of thing, it just happens to have been one of the most effective.

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