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Silicon Valley's Social Credit System

Honeydew

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I saw this making the rounds on Facebook.

Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system

At first I was put-off by the idea of China's social credit system, but according to this article, one survey found that 80% of Chinese citizens somewhat or strongly approve of social credit. I suppose it's not that surprising that Silicon Valley is attempting something similar in the US, considering that tech giants are helping to build China's surveillance state, but I've come to terms with this idea and welcome the intervention into our volatile sociopolitical environment. Although I would prefer the government to manage a social credit system rather than private corporations whose ultimate goal is to maximize their own profits, I take solace in the fact that Silicon Valley is largely comprised of progressive visionaries. There is some relevance here to the censorship of right-wing extremism on social media platforms, but not all censorship is inherently wrong. In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Therefore it is not only acceptable, but ethical to ensure that fascists are not given a platform to spread their hateful ideologies. If these measures were in place prior to 2016, we wouldn't currently have a megalomaniac in the highest office in the country running concentration camps on the border. The way I see it, authoritarianism is the future. It's inevitable. The only question is, who will wield that authority. The right and left-wing parties are in an arms race to the top; and at the moment, leftists are winning the culture war with strongholds in academia, entertainment and the media. Yet despite that advantage, a fascist now sits in the White House. I feel like it is imperative for progressives, and anyone with a sense of decency, to utilize any means necessary to silence white supremacists and ensure there is never any chance of resurgence among their ranks. If that means sacrificing a little bit of freedom, well then that's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make. And you should too.
 

Virtual ghost

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I saw this making the rounds on Facebook.

Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system

At first I was put-off by the idea of China's social credit system, but according to this article, one survey found that 80% of Chinese citizens somewhat or strongly approve of social credit. I suppose it's not that surprising that Silicon Valley is attempting something similar in the US, considering that tech giants are helping to build China's surveillance state, but I've come to terms with this idea and welcome the intervention into our volatile sociopolitical environment. Although I would prefer the government to manage a social credit system rather than private corporations whose ultimate goal is to maximize their own profits, I take solace in the fact that Silicon Valley is largely comprised of progressive visionaries. There is some relevance here to the censorship of right-wing extremism on social media platforms, but not all censorship is inherently wrong. In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Therefore it is not only acceptable, but ethical to ensure that fascists are not given a platform to spread their hateful ideologies. If these measures were in place prior to 2016, we wouldn't currently have a megalomaniac in the highest office in the country running concentration camps on the border. The way I see it, authoritarianism is the future. It's inevitable. The only question is, who will wield that authority. The right and left-wing parties are in an arms race to the top; and at the moment, leftists are winning the culture war with strongholds in academia, entertainment and the media. Yet despite that advantage, a fascist now sits in the White House. I feel like it is imperative for progressives, and anyone with a sense of decency, to utilize any means necessary to silence white supremacists and ensure there is never any chance of resurgence among their ranks. If that means sacrificing a little bit of freedom, well then that's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make. And you should too.


1. So you are going to introduce fascism to prevent fascism ?

2. You would give this power to the government even if this same government is full of people which you don't approve ?

3. Since when are tech giants progressive ? (obsession with money isn't progressive, it is very very old school idea)

4. How will you insure that this system doesn't support exactly what you want to avoid ?



My country had Communism, Fascism and various endless experiments with "authoritarianism" and therefore I can't see what good can really come out of this kind of leverage. The counter to hate groups is education, common sense and perhaps some empathy, not more of the same old monumental thinking.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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No thanks, I saw those episodes of Black Mirror and The Orville and things didn’t end well
 

Doctor Cringelord

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What VG said for his #2 reason.

What happens when someone comes to power and abuses this system to punish their political enemies?
 

Lark

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1. So you are going to introduce fascism to prevent fascism ?

2. You would give this power to the government even if this same government is full of people which you don't approve ?

3. Since when are tech giants progressive ? (obsession with money isn't progressive, it is very very old school idea)

4. How will you insure that this system doesn't support exactly what you want to avoid ?



My country had Communism, Fascism and various endless experiments with "authoritarianism" and therefore I can't see what good can really come out of this kind of leverage. The counter to hate groups is education, common sense and perhaps some empathy, not more of the same old monumental thinking.

These are the points I would have made, pretty much, if Hayek was right about anything The Road To Serfdom it was that when fascists came to power in Italy and Germany they were able to rely upon a lot of the ground having been inadvertently prepared for them by their opposition, sometimes with the idea of preventing the fascist take over in the first place.

That said I dont share the view that he did in that book (which he may not have held all his days) that any action, any action what so ever, by the government should be taboo. I just think that in this instance, like with A LOT of others, the existing laws, enforced correctly and competently should do the job. Also law is no real remedy, or only part remedy, for populism, or the sorts of deterioration and decay among the voting public which prepares the ground for populism.

Tech giants and Silicon Valley can be progressive but they also can be the exact opposite, I'm not going to write a lot about it as it will only create triggers for search engines and maybe make this site more popular with a lot of the elements looking for those thinkers but a lot of the various pill movements, the film studies/Matrix alt righters and popularisation of "accelerationism", dictatorship, neo-Malthusianism with a cyberpunk vibe, all originate there or have a certain appeal there.

If authoritarianism is trending then its got to stop, its totally ruinous, totally and utterly, whatever flag of convenience it is disguising itself with now, private, public, left, right, centre, green, it doesnt matter. You cant do a deal with the lesser devil on that score.

The kultur kampfs of both the (mainly US it has to be said) left and the right are utterly detestable too. Nothing appealing about belonging to either camp there. Nothing what so ever. If I have to make a choice, then I choose neither. Never ever will.

Anyway, social credit deserves an airing, it seems strange that there's a private initiative as my understand of it is that its similar to some universal basic income ideas, which I think could only be properly developed by governments. Not because governments have the potential to be democratic and accountable in the fashion that business is not (I would say POTENTIAL though, its not certain) but because of the borrowing requirement for schemes like that, Says Law etc. etc.

That said I'm aware that lots of different local schemes, charities, private philanthropic initiatives existed before the welfare state, some welfare pluralists want to bring that sort of thing back but it wasnt pretty, it was all born of desperation and hardship, whatever way historical dramas present it to the contrary.
 

Lark

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I think this thread should be in the politics section.

It does discuss social credit and that could be a different topic to politics, ie social policy, but the rest of the post is very political in character.
 

Lark

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Wait a minute, this is not what I thought it was and it is not what social credit meant historically.

This is a sort of behaviourist nightmare, Skinner's Walden Two maybe.

I'm conflicted about it as I think detection and certainty of detection can have a consequence for fighting crime and anti-social behaviour but often its not used that way.
 

Lark

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There's a good film on Netflix about this BTW.

Its called the Circle, I think it has Tom Hanks as a bad guy in it, sort of a Steve Jobs type.
 

Virtual ghost

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Wait a minute, this is not what I thought it was and it is not what social credit meant historically.

This is a sort of behaviourist nightmare, Skinner's Walden Two maybe.

I'm conflicted about it as I think detection and certainty of detection can have a consequence for fighting crime and anti-social behaviour but often its not used that way.


I already did some reading on what China is doing and that is exactly what was behind my post. The ways to abuse or game this are endless and you will produce plenty of unhappy people.
This isn't the way how you fight bad ideas.
 

Maou

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Yeah, this shit is authoritarian as fuck, and highly impossible to enforce accurately. Just imagine if an AI bot was set to lower your score, every time you said a curse word. This shit isn't controlled by humans, and there is a lot of grey area. It will literally fuck over many normal people, and people are gonna be red pilled very quickly about it.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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There's a good film on Netflix about this BTW.

Its called the Circle, I think it has Tom Hanks as a bad guy in it, sort of a Steve Jobs type.

You see that Black Mirror episode “nosedive”?
 

anticlimatic

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At first I was put-off by the idea of China's social credit system, but according to this article, one survey found that 80% of Chinese citizens somewhat or strongly approve of social credit.
80% of bank robbery hostages with guns to their heads strongly approve of bank robbing and the delivery of getaway choppers.

If anyone was ever wondering why conservatives are so terrified of socialism, the OP of this thread should clear up why that is quite nicely.
 

Lark

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80% of bank robbery hostages with guns to their heads strongly approve of bank robbing and the delivery of getaway choppers.

If anyone was ever wondering why conservatives are so terrified of socialism, the OP of this thread should clear up why that is quite nicely.

No, its the money.
 

Lark

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I already did some reading on what China is doing and that is exactly what was behind my post. The ways to abuse or game this are endless and you will produce plenty of unhappy people.
This isn't the way how you fight bad ideas.

I think it is liable to go wrong for sure.

Its interesting to hear how it has operated but the reality is that its also operating in an environment and with an accompanying culture which is pretty conformist and authoritarian. I'm not sure it would work at all in other cultures which are dissimilar.

On the other hand its probably just a matter of time until entropy in the west drives people into embracing some kind of insane social creedo that supports coercion, punitive responses and stringent authoritarianism, the early signs of it are already there.

When conservatives complain about "police states" its seldom the policing part that they've any problem with but the state part. I'd say its probably why its a private and workplace initiative in the US rather than a state one. There was some kind of discussion a long, long time ago on this forum about health care in the US where it is provided via private insurance as a work related perk, it dealt with some of this I think.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Any sort of social registry of this sort should scare people, whether it’s happening in business or government. USA needs a true libertarian socialist movement that recognizes this. Instead, the left is willing to tolerate authoritarianism in centralized state government, while the right is more willing to tolerate it in the private sector.

We should be wary of it in any sector.
 

Virtual ghost

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I think it is liable to go wrong for sure.

Its interesting to hear how it has operated but the reality is that its also operating in an environment and with an accompanying culture which is pretty conformist and authoritarian. I'm not sure it would work at all in other cultures which are dissimilar.



Yes, but the catch is that this is a factor that can overwrite the culture, especially with time. Totalitarian systems in my part of the world did remake my culture a number of times. The whole practical implementation of totalitarian system is that you "rewrite history", what was before doesn't exist. Here you don't have a "back in 1934 there was a law that .... " arguments, here that was 4 political system back and this doesn't serve as an argument that impresses people. To be honest it bothers me when I see people here do this since there were so different circumstances back then.
Actually now it is 2019 and archives of the communist era are still mostly closed, while the archives of our fascism are actually in the Bunker in Belgrade where Communists hide them so that they can't be researched. While what was before was destroyed in wars, revolutions and mismanagement for the most part. Therefore my county doesn't really have a official/settled history of 20th century, just as neighboring countries.


So remaking cultures is something that is more than possible. Here people just can't see the Church in the same way as in the west since it was banned and priests were someone "bitches" for decades. So that original purity is lost since a few decades of anti-church opened quite a few obvious theological questions. If God is almighty and Church holy then what the hell was "that" half a century. You just can't go back 100% and culture got changed.
 

Lark

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Yes, but the catch is that this is a factor that can overwrite the culture, especially with time. Totalitarian systems in my part of the world did remake my culture a number of times. The whole practical implementation of totalitarian system is that you "rewrite history", what was before doesn't exist. Here you don't have a "back in 1934 there was a law that .... " arguments, here that was 4 political system back and this doesn't serve as an argument that impresses people. To be honest it bothers me when I see people here do this since there were so different circumstances back then.
Actually now it is 2019 and archives of the communist era are still mostly closed, while the archives of our fascism are actually in the Bunker in Belgrade where Communists hide them so that they can't be researched. While what was before was destroyed in wars, revolutions and mismanagement for the most part. Therefore my county doesn't really have a official/settled history of 20th century, just as neighboring countries.


So remaking cultures is something that is more than possible. Here people just can't see the Church in the same way as in the west since it was banned and priests were someone "bitches" for decades. So that original purity is lost since a few decades of anti-church opened quite a few obvious theological questions. If God is almighty and Church holy then what the hell was "that" half a century. You just can't go back 100% and culture got changed.

Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.
 

Virtual ghost

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Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.


Exactly.
So I am not truly thrilled about what was presented in OP thread. Introducing this suddenly is hard but if it is gradual through 5 to 10 years and it is giving some benefits to it ... you can introduce this everywhere in some form. As a matter of fact FB is actually pretty decent foundation for something like this and the most actually accepted it with time. However the irony of all this is that you need some kind of collectivism to stand up to this, since people as individuals are both vulnerable and open to suggestions. Which is why these kinds of ideas are dangerous since it is hard to keep them at bay.

The main problem of technology is that it allows "prefect dictatorship".
 
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