Dystopian future is coming: China introduces "social credit score"

I've been following Extra Credits on Youtube for a while and their latest episode just blew my mind. Apparently China has established a scoring system for their citizens which will become mandatory in 2020. You improve your score by being "productive member of the society", which is determined by your social status, purchase history, social media activity and your friend's scores.

"Someone who plays video games for 10 hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person, and someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility," Li Yingyun, Sesame's technology director told Caixin, a Chinese magazine, in February.

The system also actively discourages from associating yourself with people that have low score, they will lower your score and make it harder to access the benefits given to "good citizen".

"This scheme is far more sinister than it seems at first, as you’re also getting assorted immediate privileges based on this credit score:

If your credit score reaches 600, you have the privilege of an instant loan of about $800 without collateral when shopping online.

At a score of 650, you may rent a car without leaving a deposit.

At 700, you get access to a bureaucratic fast track to a Singapore travel permit.

And at 750, you get a similar fast track to a coveted pan-European Schengen visa."

Here's the Extra Credits episode about it, it's less than 8 minutes long and worth watching (don't know how to embed video here):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI

Couple articles about the system:

BBC: China 'social credit': Beijing sets up huge system

All Chinese citizens now have a score based on how well we live, and mine sucks

In China, Your Credit Score Is Now Affected By Your Political Opinions – And Your Friends’ Political Opinions

Doesn't seem that different to the credit score system the Americans use.

@isomeri: I think that's what they used as a baseline and then took it way further. Imagine if credit score was affected by what you say on Facebook or who you hang out with.

Uggggghhhh.

Here's hoping I'm dead by the time this (inevitably) makes its way to other countries.

I don't know much about economics but doesnt't this sound like a system that could be abused until a depression hits?

Crazy China just being crazy China.

"Someone who plays video games for 10 hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person, and someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility,"

Because having kids makes you responsible. If anything with the people I see at work, the more kids they have the less reaponsible they are likely to be and trying to suck out gov benefits...

All forms of "credit score" are garbage.

Great. Now I'm depressed.

@isomeri: So much more sinister.

Credit Score is really just a tracker of how well you pay back your debt. That makes sense and is mostly fair. This is straight nightmare fuel. Please color in the lines or we will mark in your file that you don't color in the lines and make broad statically based assumptions about you.

"Someone who plays video games for 10 hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person, and someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility," Li Yingyun, Sesame's technology director told Caixin, a Chinese magazine, in February.

Sure, broad generalizations have never been inaccurate or harmful to large groups of people. So all I have to do to throw them off into thinking I'm a responsible and productive member of society is buy diapers?

It looks pretty bad on the surface, but that second article that delves into how the score is calculated makes it seem less nightmarish. If your score goes up literally every time you buy something, then I'm not sure if it's that reliable of a system to begin with.

Still crazy though.

I wonder where 'calling out the government for the pollution of Beijing' sits on their scale.

Users are encouraged to flaunt their good credit scores to friends, and even potential mates. China's biggest matchmaking service, Baihe, has teamed up with Sesame to promote clients with good credit scores, giving them prominent spots on the company's website.

The Chinese credit score sounds like the fancy fake job title of 2020.

So it isn't Nukes, or Pollution, or War that will end everything...it's games?

Live off the grid, bitches!!!

Wait, I'm not up to date with China, but is it trying to create a social currency? I mean its ostensibly a communist nation right? How extensive are their social services? Are they heavily explored? I need to go read about this but if someone could help me out that'd be great.

Roll Renegade on your 1st run..

A quick orientation for the above poster, China is now an incredibly wealthy and industrial post-communist country that owns most of the worlds debt, and now has vast burgeoning middle class.

By adding this layer of social worth to credit scores, this will either serve as further status distinction that could be used to punish those at a disadvantage or at the very least result in wonky bureaucratic outcomes.

Also this is a concerning quote to say the least from the BBC article:

A lengthy planning document from China's elite State Council explains that social credit will "forge a public opinion environment that trust-keeping is glorious", warning that the "new system will reward those who report acts of breach of trust".

Yikes.

Read this a while back. Scary that there's a lot of arbitrary assumptions built into the system.

Between this and China declaring that the internet should be controlled by states tells me the desperation in squashing the information age. People had belittled Trump recemtly for essentially saying the same thing, but in reality he has China and the NSA to inspire him it can be done. He has no intention of relying on his own ignorance, but of course he cannot come out and speak of the apparent models. It's rather that we(the US in this case) is a (relatively) free country, and the difference between us and China is lost on him.

But hey, perfect, the art of the deal.

Fresh from the horrifying speech Xi Jinping gave about how the internet should be controlled by nations I bump into this monstrosity. I have always been very wary of gameification and exploitative game systems and using social pressure to gain compliance and subservience is downright horrifying.

A system so like this possibly being implemented by 2020 in one of the world's leading economies fills me with extreme dread.

I don't see what's so weird about it. They're communists. Makes sense.

Too bad Konami gave up on video games. MGS6 could have had Facebook as the weapon to surpass metal gear.

This legitimately terrifies me though. I want to believe that Extra Credits video is making this seem worse than it actually is.

Seems like it's just a form of social currency. You know, the same kind of performativity that exists in every single society.

Only difference is that China is trying to make it official.

Yes, it sucks, but it's just a new spin on a well-worn idea.

I bet its super fun to have all your friends stop talking to you because of your low score, Although I'm curious how that would even be tracked.

Part of me just really wants to figure out how to break the scoring system and get a super high score.

@cmblasko: Credit scores aren't garbage. They're a quick reference to see if someone actually knows how to repay something.

Why would a lender risk giving out money to someone that hasn't proven to be responsible?

Some of you will move to China and try to platinum their social experiment. I know you people all too well.

It's the gross middle-stage where we get shitty dystopian systems without all the cyberpunk.

Sooooooo, what are the chances this is somehow gonna fail miserably and explode in their faces so all other nations are scared off of the idea? Close to 0? OK COOL FUCK OUR FUTURE.

They're communists?

That would never get through Western processes. And China will only continue to do it if there's financial benefits.

@shindig: Never say never ~

But yeah I agree, as we stand now it's not something to be immediately afraid of.

No, I'll say never. What'll Experian do if their credit score system is seen as worthless? When the crunch hit, the banks took the flak rather than the credit companies.

I deleted my facebook over a year ago and I'm never going back. Gives you a nice healthy perspective. To me this whole thing sounds like fucking insanity.

@csl316: Credit scores and the companies that cover them are slowly killing this country's working and middle-class. Companies like Experian are not a good thing and the fact that credit scores are deeply entrenched in American financial culture is wretched.

@the_tribunal: How are credit scores killing the middle class? If you're bad with money, why should my bank risk giving you a loan?

Edit: There was another sentence here that apparently people didn't like. So I'm just gonna delete it to de-escalate (though it's quoted elsewhere).

@csl316: Ah, a bank owner. I don't have time to work on a response right now, but I'll get back to you in a bit.

I know people who have great credit scores and aren't responsible and vice versa. It's not always an accurate representation of one's ability to repay loans, especially when you get into situations where someone who is living paycheck-to-paycheck (which is very common here in the US) loses their job and has to miss or defer student loan, mortgage, car, etc. payments for a short amount of time and it wreaks havoc on their credit which then affects them for the rest of their life.

I'm not saying that I have any better ideas for how it would work but I think we could do way better than what we have now.

At least we already have Holographic Pop Stars.

Isn't this just Meow Meow Beenz from Community?

It's nice to know this is being implemented by the same country that managed to completely screw up food production in their "Great Leap Forward".

On the plus side, it probably won't kill 5x as many people as the Holocaust did.

Ah, China. Fascism at its finest!

I don't know if its changed in recent years, but when I lived in China no one dealt in credit, even for things like buying an apartment. Maybe it's different now, but it would be a way bigger deal if this was implemented in North America.

While i think this would be horrendous, I wonder what it would do to racism in the US. There is a conceivable scenario where it would eliminate it.

Is China still building for the sake of it or has the arse fell out of that sector?

When my Credit reaches Zero will all of my Organs be Sold off ?