China's soon-to-be mandatory Social Network Game

[whitecoast]

Hello, I've come across a new Chinese social network developed by several chinese companies - one a game, one an online retailer. The network gathers data about users through their peer interactions and this data causes the system to assign you a "social credit score". Data is pulled from other social networks and online retailers as well. This is analogous to the US credit card score, only instead of tracking your ability to pay bills it measures how good a person/citizen you are. If you share volunteer opportunities and buy healthy food, your score goes up. If you spend a lot of time on games, buy lots of porn, or share conspiracy theories (probably), your score goes down. Since it's linked to online purchases it can modify your score based on consumer preferences as well. I think it's actually pretty brilliant as a piece of social engineering - since it can use peer pressure to encourage more altruistic behavior if it is used right. But a lot of people are concerned it will be angled to determine how good a citizen a person is with reference to how loyal they are to the state, which definitely gives it Orwellian overtones. One of the most alarming rules about it too is that your score suffers a penalty for having FRIENDS with low scores also, which is designed to help isolate less successful (or, theoretically, obedient individuals).

There's been talk about rewarding those with high scores with faster services like loan or visa approvals. It doesn't take much imagination to see the reverse could be implemented against those with low scores.

_http://www.popsci.com/china-wants-people-to-opt-in-to-new-mandatory-citizenship-game

Citizens of China can now find their credit scores in a mobile app called Sesame Credit. It's linked to their friends, shareable online, and either “a concept straight out of a cyberpunk dystopia,” according to The Independent, or, according to Quartz, more like a benign credit-card loyalty program that “operates independently from" the social credit system the government called for earlier this year.

In its January directive, the Chinese government described the social credit system as “an important component part of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system”. In particular, it “uses encouragement to keep trust and constraints against breaking trust as incentive mechanisms, and its objective is raising the honest mentality and credit levels of the entire society.”

The ACLU was not subtle in its warning about the coercive power of such a system. In a post titled “China’s Nightmarish Citizen Scores Are a Warning For Americans,” senior policy analyst Jay Stanley wrote “China appears to be leveraging all the tools of the information age—electronic purchasing data, social networks, algorithmic sorting—to construct the ultimate tool of social control.”

Quartz spells out how Sesame Credit works and makes the point that -- thus far -- it is not linked to the government system.

Sesame Credit’s origins lie in China’s once-barren consumer finance industry. Compared to the United States, China’s financial institutions have done little to serve consumers and small businesses. The People’s Bank of China— the central bank—runs the country’s only official credit rating system, and as of 2014 it serves only about 300 million people. That’s less than 25% of the total population. In the US, by contrast, 89% of the adult population has a credit score. As a result, many Chinese consumers have been saving rather than borrowing or investing. That in turn stunts domestic consumption, a worrying factor amid China’s slowing economy.

Right before the holidays, game-design-centric channel Extra Credits took that critique a step further, looking at the way games and social networks can modify behavior, and fearing the worst for consumers in China. They have a seven minute video about it below:

https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI

The reality, so far, appears more benign, but the authoritarian potential is there. Sesame Credit, for now, seems to just track volume of personal purchases, bill payments, credit card payments, location, and friends on the network. According to The Independent, Sesame Credit will be mandatory for all citizens by 2020. There’s definitely potential for abuse, especially if credit scores can sink based on poorly ranked friends, but there isn’t anything yet that clearly links credit to government preferred behavior. At best, that leaves us with this hauntingly weak conclusion: the system isn’t explicitly dystopian yet, but it has all the pieces to be dystopian at a moment’s notice. Download it today, citizen!

While I don't think this kind of system should be mandatory, I think it could be used for good or evil, depending on how it is implemented. Like every other technology, I guess. Good for controlling authoritarian followers, at least.

 

[Rich]

While I don't think this kind of system should be mandatory, I think it could be used for good or evil, depending on how it is implemented. Like every other technology, I guess. Good for controlling authoritarian followers, at least.

I think the authoritarians happily adopt such a system without little encouragement. It will be be the free-thinking non-conformists who will struggle with the increased gov-directed peer pressure.

Will be an interesting experiment to watch and I'm sure will be followed closely by the West for lessons that will creep into controlling our internet activity :(

 

[duyunne]

I believe the sophistication of the masses are blatantly being ignored by which ever think groups are behind this terrible idea. That and it also seems losely based on an Japanese animation series. The system is a sort of Panopticon called the Sybil system: http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Sibyl_System

In my opinion, the cyber security of such an endeavour is far too robust a gamble to implement confidently. Even if it is infrastructure the world hasn't seen yet, the masses will break through it in our current state, if I feel it deserves to be destroyed on mere moral principle then it guarantees a statistical probability. if not the individual coders themselves who are building it can (and will, considering the STS climate) easily undermine the system during or after implementation.

 

[thorbiorn]

Now we are in 2020, and where is the relation to reality? CreditSesame does exist Free Credit Score and Credit Report Analysis | Credit Sesame I could also find it using Chinese search engines, but the way it is presented where I am, when I click on the homepage does not include the features mentioned in the video about how it was alleged to be used in China as a tool of social control.