The ‘Social Credit System’ in China (35:11)

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Welcome to the last topic of lesson three: The Social Credit system in China. Before we head into the system in China, let’s head into what the West already is right now: a scored society. A scored society is a society in which citizens are given a score on the basis of large amounts of data being analyzed by profiling techniques. See topic four of this lesson. These scores are given by governments and companies. In the end, those scores can determine if you are allowed to have a certain right, or if you can use a certain service, and against what price. You are getting these scores without you actually knowing it. And so the consequences for you are not known either.

That last part is completely different in China. In 2014 they introduced the plans for a scored society, in which every Chinese citizen gets a score for it’s behavior. This general score is publicly known and so are the consequences for having a low score. This score is being used by the government and companies on a large scale. If you behave badly according to the state, you’ll get a low score, which can have consequences like: being excluded from certain jobs, housing, or lending. Different forms of data has it’s influence on the score: somebody’s debts, someone’s posts on social media and even the scores of people in someones social circle. What information are you reading? And do adults pay visits to their children? If the parents are complaining, then this can have an influence on the score of their children. The list goes on and on. NBC news reported on the system a year ago, let’s take a look at it. (INSERT VIDEO)

So the ultimate judgement of your behaviour is not made by human beings. It’s made by computers, by AI. So information that might seem unimportant to you in the first place, might be really important for the systems judgement on what your score might be. Information about your sexual preference, your health or other sensitive information. You step into a world in which you can’t do anything anymore without betraying yourself. A system in which people know that they are being surveilled every moment of they day, and know they are being judged. And so you get a society of fake people not being their own self, but being someone the system wants them to be.

People who’ve already watched dystopian series of Black Mirror, or the movie The Circle, already know how a society or a company can look like. In the Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive’, the exact Chinese Social Credit system is being portrayed. The only difference is that people are able to see someones score right next to their head. The Circle is a movie based on a novel from Dave Eggers, which portrays a Facebook-like company that believes everything should be transparent and open. The same principle is applied there: you get a score based on your behavior, how social you are, your social media posts, your achieved targets. Both the Black Mirror Nosedive episode and ‘the Circle’ teach you the same lessen: creating a culture like this creates fake personalities that constantly are trying in every way shape or form to keep their scores up. In a culture like that there is no room for unique individuals or personalities.

As I explained in previous topics, the groundwork for a scored society is already in place in the West. The internet is a surveillance machine by design. And although it may seem like those situations won’t occur in Western society, we are not to far away from it now. The COVID-19 response by Governments worldwide have been more dystopian ever seen before in the West. Edward Snowden already raised big concerns on the response, and says it will take many years to reclaim all the freedoms that have been taken away by governments in this small amount of time. I will end this topic with a recent VICE interview with Snowden on the COVID19 crisis, I strongly advise you to watch the whole thing.

The privacy revolution we need will be bottom op. People need to realize things can be done and make different decisions based on that knowledge. Don’t expect someone to come up and fix your problems. As Gandhi used to say: be the change you want to see in the world. I’ll see you in section two, where we will head into the main problems of the biggest spy device on our lives. And most important: what can we do about it? See you there.

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