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Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

sitchensis posted:

God this is depressing. Can we even call this a totalitarian state? It seems to me that all of this is the state in service of capital.

Please expand on how state surveillance is in service of capital.

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Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


(This title paid for by money stolen from PDVSA)
Wow it's almost as if the state is a structure that exists to maintain one social class in a position of power to enforce its interests over society as a whole and that we live in a system called capitalism where this ruling class are the property owners :O

sitchensis
Mar 4, 2009

Fojar38 posted:

Please expand on how state surveillance is in service of capital.

The revolution won't be Tweeted

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Salt Fish posted:

It is highly likely that there is already a similar system in place in the United States being run as an FBI/CIA/NSA cooperative. They don't capture as much Internet data as possible and store it in giant datacenters for no reason. It's too easy to hook up a MOSIAC algorithm to look at the incoming data and process it into a generic trustworthiness score and it would be totally legal because until a human looks at the information it isn't a "search".

Sure, but it won't give you one total "trustworthy citizen" number and tie it into your credit score and shopping habits or going to look at how much of a Democrat you are compared to your friends. It will definitely do a large part of that and check how jihadi you are compared to them (which is fine IMO) but overall, it's not the right kind of profile to be used for what China is trying to do. It also helps that there are two parties so neither of them can safely Orwell the other half out of top secret clearances and bureaucratic appointments.

BabelFish
Jul 20, 2013

Fallen Rib

Fojar38 posted:

Please expand on how state surveillance is in service of capital.

The best way to make money is a monopoly. What better monopoly then that of an authoritarian regime?

Flavahbeast
Jul 21, 2001


Just a head's up, there's no timer on the flag out by the soccer fields, I've been saluting it for seven hours straight and now I'm on top of my district's leaderboard for this month

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

Flavahbeast posted:

Just a head's up, there's no timer on the flag out by the soccer fields, I've been saluting it for seven hours straight and now I'm on top of my district's leaderboard for this month

In before you're banned for exploiting an obvious bug

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

Fojar38 posted:

You're insane if you think that anything even close to this would be arriving in the US, or any Western country for that matter. In the US especially if the government tried something like this there would be hordes of people making GBS threads all over it and ignoring it completely as a matter of principle.

Also something something First Amendment

Credit scoring is 'voluntary'

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

Soon you will have your God - you will make it with your own hands.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Adar posted:

Sure, but it won't give you one total "trustworthy citizen" number and tie it into your credit score and shopping habits or going to look at how much of a Democrat you are compared to your friends. It will definitely do a large part of that and check how jihadi you are compared to them (which is fine IMO) but overall, it's not the right kind of profile to be used for what China is trying to do. It also helps that there are two parties so neither of them can safely Orwell the other half out of top secret clearances and bureaucratic appointments.

There are two parties that have extremely similar worldviews on all but a fairly narrow range of very specific issues, and already independent of any kind of formal system for grading someone's politics people have been pretty proactive about using social media to ferret out and hound those who display evidence of being outside the window of acceptable thought. The danger is not to people who vote Democrat or think Planned Parenthood should be defunded, they're your basic 'good citizens' who don't meaningfully threaten the status quo even to the other side; it's to the Muslims and the Communists and the black power activists and the wartime pacifists of the future who rightthinking persons of both parties can get together on hating (and anyone who might readily be mistaken for one).


sitchensis posted:

God this is depressing. Can we even call this a totalitarian state? It seems to me that all of this is the state in service of capital.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, if anything the relationship between tech and government so far has very much been capital in service of the state (if you discount the basic fact of the telecoms infrastructure having needed state support to be established in the first place). The Feds have backdoors into all of Google's systems, not vice versa; Tencent is ranking citizens for the Chinese government, any private exploitation of the results is incidental.

Private companies can and do dip into the exact same data trough, of course, it's all out there for anyone with the resources to compile the data. They won't get the NSA's level of unfettered access to everything that's behind every password but there's enough purely public data out there to get a very good picture of whether someone's an ideal corporate citizen, a lot of people getting paid to acquire data that isn't purely public by hook or by crook, and there's been a whole lot of money invested with a lot of good results on compiling and analyzing that data to develop a solid predictive profile on your habits and predilections. I've seen plenty of businesses with recommended lifestyles and hobbies for ideal prospective employees, and your manager might mark you as Weird if you don't have an up-to-date Facebook account.

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 17, 2015

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

There are two parties that have extremely similar worldviews on all but a fairly narrow range of very specific issues, and already independent of any kind of formal system for grading someone's politics people have been pretty proactive about using social media to ferret out and hound those who display evidence of being outside the window of acceptable thought. The danger is not to people who vote Democrat or think Planned Parenthood should be defunded, they're your basic 'good citizens' who don't meaningfully threaten the status quo even to the other side; it's to the Muslims and the Communists and the black power activists and the wartime pacifists of the future who rightthinking persons of both parties can get together on hating (and anyone who might readily be mistaken for one).

Those Communists you mentioned, along with civil rights activists outside the Overton window, were getting crushed much harder sixty years ago without the Internet being a thing and before we even had a country-wide interstate highway system. I don't want to downplay your point because it's valid, but what the three letter agencies are doing with that info right now looks like it's overfocused on collection and storage and underdelivering on results. At some point they will figure out how to get results, then at some further (or maybe not much further) point overreact until the inevitable backlash and history repeating itself. What I don't see even when they do overreact is the NSA looking up every poster on 4chan, Stormfront or whatever the new LF is and getting them all fired or arrested on trumped up charges by the local cops, which was very much a real thing back in the day and the worst case scenario in China. Your activism might rule you out of some jobs but it was already doing that when, as you've pointed out, HR looked you up on Facebook or called up the background check agency they had on retainer to do that instead.

Teriyaki Koinku
Nov 25, 2008

Bread! Bread! Bread!

Bread! BREAD! BREAD!

sitchensis posted:

God this is depressing. Can we even call this a totalitarian state? It seems to me that all of this is the state in service of capital.

Late-stage capitalism is essentially totalitarianism in a nutshell. Capitalism is very opportunistic and non-preferential when it comes to extracting wealth and the fruits of labor. If democracy achieves this, that works; if totalitarianism does it better, then so be it.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Adar posted:

Those Communists you mentioned, along with civil rights activists outside the Overton window, were getting crushed much harder sixty years ago without the Internet being a thing and before we even had a country-wide interstate highway system. I don't want to downplay your point because it's valid, but what the three letter agencies are doing with that info right now looks like it's overfocused on collection and storage and underdelivering on results. At some point they will figure out how to get results, then at some further (or maybe not much further) point overreact until the inevitable backlash and history repeating itself. What I don't see even when they do overreact is the NSA looking up every poster on 4chan, Stormfront or whatever the new LF is and getting them all fired or arrested on trumped up charges by the local cops, which was very much a real thing back in the day and the worst case scenario in China. Your activism might rule you out of some jobs but it was already doing that when, as you've pointed out, HR looked you up on Facebook or called up the background check agency they had on retainer to do that instead.

The communists were getting crushed harder sixty years ago because anybody actually gave a gently caress about Communists sixty years ago. Are you suggesting that, were the USSR still a going concern right now and the commies had a hope in hell of actually shaking up the halls of power, the feds would be incapable of doing all the things they did to combat them in the 60s and then some? I don't know what the name of the next generations' batch of radicals is gonna be I just know the names of all the past ones to get swatted down.

Countries don't just wildly flail around trying to bag every UFO theorist and neoreactionary that wouldn't pass on NPR just for the hell of it; even the Chinese government with much narrower definitions of acceptable/harmless speech only really bothers actively persecute some select groups that it considers somehow a threat, and the witch hunts have an ebb and flow. You're right that the feds are still figuring out how to handle the insane glut of omniscience they've been granted - it's all brand new and still gelling after all. My point was not that we're already at Maximum Orwell right now, just that the foundations have been laid and the limits at which the people start to object have been probed and mapped, so we already know how far they can go and roughly what direction to expect the future to trend in. Actually putting it all together is still a work in progress, but when everything you say or do that may indirectly involve a computer is already public knowledge and the powers that be are encouraged to act on anything they find on you I don't see learning to put all that data together into a more accurate picture being the point where The People will rise en masse and say enough is enough.

We've also been at an abnormally stable and peaceful point in American history - no more race riots (until Ferguson, debatably), no real wars, quiescent labor force, big existential threat of our times a bunch of Pakistani hillbillies who can crowdfund a plane ticket once a decade. That state of affairs won't last forever, what will is the capacity for a central power to sit at the center of a web of all communication and passively feel the vibrations from every living room, and send its own vibes back.

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Dec 18, 2015

Teriyaki Koinku
Nov 25, 2008

Bread! Bread! Bread!

Bread! BREAD! BREAD!

Adar posted:

Sure, but it won't give you one total "trustworthy citizen" number and tie it into your credit score and shopping habits or going to look at how much of a Democrat you are compared to your friends. It will definitely do a large part of that and check how jihadi you are compared to them (which is fine IMO) but overall, it's not the right kind of profile to be used for what China is trying to do. It also helps that there are two parties so neither of them can safely Orwell the other half out of top secret clearances and bureaucratic appointments.

"First they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Muslim."

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->
I still don't understand how people are connecting state-surveillance with capitalism.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

Well even the commies are farming their big data R&D and server maintenance out to private for-profit service providers, IDK that they have to go together but I guess corporations are a better philosophical fit for the new paradigm

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Dec 18, 2015

Bob le Moche
Jul 10, 2011

I AM A HORRIBLE TANKIE MORON
WHO LONGS TO SUCK CHAVISTA COCK !

I SUGGEST YOU IGNORE ANY POSTS MADE BY THIS PERSON ABOUT VENEZUELA, POLITICS, OR ANYTHING ACTUALLY !


(This title paid for by money stolen from PDVSA)

Fojar38 posted:

I still don't understand how people are connecting state-surveillance with capitalism.

Capitalism means a few people own and control everything and we all need to work our rear end off for them our entire life in exchange for the scraps we require to survive. That's a situation that would be pretty unstable and lead to revolt if it wasn't for the fact that the nation-state exists to enforce private property, repress dissent, and generally protect the interests of the ruling class through institutions like the police, prisons, military, and yes mass surveillance programs

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

Bob le Moche posted:

Capitalism means a few people own and control everything and we all need to work our rear end off for them our entire life in exchange for the scraps we require to survive.

That sounds more like feudalism actually.

blueyedevil
Apr 17, 2014

Bob le Moche posted:

Capitalism means a few people own and control everything and we all need to work our rear end off for them our entire life in exchange for the scraps we require to survive.

That's the shittiest undergrad definition of capitalism I've seen in a while, good job.

What's interesting is to see the huge difference in attitudes between this forum and the Chinese citizenry, who aren't really bothered by social credit.

ate shit on live tv
Feb 15, 2004

by Azathoth

Fojar38 posted:

That sounds more like feudalism actually.

Well how would you describe the current status quo of the G8? Feudalism, or Capitalism

Mc Do Well
Aug 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

Fojar38 posted:

I still don't understand how people are connecting state-surveillance with capitalism.

Carly Fiorina made the connection quite clear at the debate IMO

Information technology came out of Bell Labs and other R&D projects funded in the private/public truce brokered by FDR.

Always in motion the material conditions are.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord

Fojar38 posted:

In before you're banned for exploiting an obvious bug

THE AMERICAN WAY™ Patch Notes 1.0.1

Bug Fixes:
- The flag outside the soccer stadium has been fixed. Violators have had their points reduced to 0.
- Stocks in Google (GOOG) were mistakenly rewarding extra points. This has been fixed and Google has elected not to punish abusers.
- Several low-income schools were receiving the No Child Left Behind Bonus after failing to meet their goals. We believe this has been fixed.

Balance Fixes:
- CEOs now have maximum points. This is permanent until corporate statistics can be resolved.
- All Athletes now have maximum points while contracted with the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL.
- Doctors have had a slight increase in points.
- Programmers have had a slight increase in points.
- Robotics Experts have had a moderate increase in points.
- Liberal Arts Majors have had a moderate reduction in points.

New Content:
- The US Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard now have new objectives for civilians. Points accrued with the US Armed Forces will be rewarded upon enlistment.
- Small Business Appreciation Week has begun! Spend your money at any designated Small Business to receive +10 loyalty points! One bonus per business. Maximum cap of +100.

Unresolved Issues:
- We are aware that candidates running for President of the United States have received wildly fluctuating scores in a short period of time. We are investigating the cause of this. Please note that just because an unpopular candidate has a higher score than an popular candidate does not mean the United State Government, nor the White House, explicitly endorses these candidates.
- The Veteran Bonus is not being applied to retired veterans. This will be fixed in a future update.

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
If you can see everyone's rank, it works both ways - you build an organization based on encrypted communication and face to face contact, keep your scores average on the network, then you systematically hunt and kill everyone who scores high.

I don't think this the end of resistance to totalitarian states. It's easy to talk gamification and how people GO CRAZY for cheevo's, but if people don't want what the game delivers, they have no reason to play it. The incentives might be nice, but if the Communist party of China is really loving resented, Totalitarian Farmville won't save them. Getting a high score will as much be a mark of complicity.

VileLL
Oct 3, 2015


Fojar38 posted:

I still don't understand how people are connecting state-surveillance with capitalism.

how could this monumentally corrupt government use a surveillance programme to unfairly benefit their rich friends in return for a payback

the answer may surprise you

lollontee
Nov 4, 2014
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

Fojar38 posted:

I still don't understand how people are connecting state-surveillance with capitalism.

Because the kind of Authoritarian Capitalism (or capitalism with asian values) that practices these kinds of policies are the most succesful economies of today?

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

lollontee
Nov 4, 2014
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
I mean I get it, it's a confusing time and it's a weird thing to think that authoritarian states might come up societal innovations that actually work and create stable societies, especially if you still think that Fukuyama was right. Spoiler alert: even Fukuyama doesnt believe in it anymore. I'm not trying to sound alarmist and I doubt that the worst kinds of abuses we see in China or Singapore will ever happen on the same scale as do there, but I really do think that what is being created there is a true novelty. An authoritarian state with nominal personal freedoms and total political oppression, which contrary to all historical precedents has a functional economy and is stable.

It's going to have repercussions. You're going to have a bad time.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

rudatron posted:

If you can see everyone's rank, it works both ways - you build an organization based on encrypted communication and face to face contact, keep your scores average on the network, then you systematically hunt and kill everyone who scores high.

Everything being on a computer isn't the same thing as Anonymous getting to make Assassin's Creed real and Ezio is your friend, you know

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Dec 18, 2015

Xerxes17
Feb 17, 2011

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

Everything being on a computer isn't the same thing as Anonymous getting to make Assassin's Creed real and Ezio is your friend, you know

I think his point is that instead of going after official targets (politicians, mayors etc) or the mass public, a theoretical terrorist group could use the system to give them target information on people opposed to them ideologically. Going after people who are not a distinct part of the system but do support it would be a way to undermine the system.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

That is the mass public. Your shadowy technoninja superterrorist group is striking a deathblow against The System by murdering random loving people who have too big a flag on their front lawn, which they coulda done just as well fifty years ago, while the state now has a comprehensive list of everyone who tends sympathetic to your cause who is not yet themselves one with the night, the details on what they're actually up to every day, and a means to deal with them all simultaneously.

If you have equal spying and murder capacity to the government to contend with it on its own turf, and your command of the populace outweighs the state's to the extent that it's dangerous to be seen as pro-government, you're not 'building an organization' and operating in the shadows you either are part of the government or in the last few months of winning a civil war. What you're describing isn't a resistance to totalitarianism it's one totalitarian regime that's replaced another through other means resuming its predecessor's policies.

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Dec 18, 2015

lollontee
Nov 4, 2014
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Eat the rich. Claim their powers.

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

That is the mass public. Your shadowy technoninja superterrorist group is striking a deathblow against The System by murdering random loving people who have too big a flag on their front lawn, which they coulda done just as well fifty years ago, while the state now has a comprehensive list of everyone who tends sympathetic to your cause who is not yet themselves one with the night, the details on what they're actually up to every day, and a means to deal with them all simultaneously.

If you have equal spying and murder capacity to the government to contend with it on its own turf, and your command of the populace outweighs the state's to the extent that it's dangerous to be seen as pro-government, you're not 'building an organization' and operating in the shadows you either are part of the government or in the last few months of winning a civil war. What you're describing isn't a resistance to totalitarianism it's one totalitarian regime that's replaced another through other means resuming its predecessor's policies.

I dunno, "every week we will kill the highest-rated person we can get to" is a pretty good reason to keep your score low.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

I can't independently confirm this but I have a feeling kung fu movies have misrepresented the actual prevalence and social influence of unstoppable Chinese secret assassins. If factoids about people gave serial killers the power to lead a whole country around by the nose however they pleased there'd probably be a lot fewer prostitutes and an outsider minority group very publicly killing the most upstanding everyday Joes they can find to terrorize everyone else into compliance strikes me as more a rally round the flag and kill all the terrorists moment than something that's likely to reduce the nation entire to cowering quislings.

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Dec 18, 2015

Stinky_Pete
Aug 16, 2015

Stinkier than your average bear
Lipstick Apathy
You can still game it though—Chinese people just need to get really good at sarcasm, and talk in code words.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

I can't independently confirm this but I have a feeling kung fu movies have misrepresented the actual prevalence and social influence of unstoppable Chinese secret assassins. If factoids about people gave serial killers the power to lead a whole country around by the nose however they pleased there'd probably be a lot fewer prostitutes and an outsider minority group very publicly killing the most upstanding everyday Joes they can find to terrorize everyone else into compliance strikes me as more a rally round the flag and kill all the terrorists moment than something that's likely to reduce the nation entire to cowering quislings.

Didn't work for France in Algeria.

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

The colonial French administration kind of had a problem it actually being them who was the minority in Algeria

I'm pretty sure at least half of Chinese people identify as Chinese

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
They don't have to be ninjas or whatever, they can just be a terrorist group like any other. loving knives will work fine. High scorers are going to be normal people (they're easy targets), it's a big flashy attack that grabs headlines (highest score in X district murdered), and it's a great way to look like they're doing something.

Like this system is a lot more gimmicky than it looks. It can't read minds, and it doesn't change the fundamental dynamic of stability in China. Political stability in China rests on both economic growth, and the perception that things are going to get better in the future. People are willing to make sacrifices if they think it's worth it. But the system is rampantly corrupt, inequality is only going to go up (You think the same group of people running the state corporations are going to give a toss about inequality?), and the full political suppression is only going to make the much needed reforms impossible to implement. What do you think is going to happen when that growth stalls, and all the proles realize that the middle class prosperity they were promised is never coming? You think a game is going to save them? People will just stop playing, cheat, or cruise by on mediocrity. Having a higher score may itself carry a stigma of being a suck-up (or if the regime is really loving hated - a collaborator).

China is not stable, it just has yet to encounter a crisis. Full political suppression just means that there is no outlet valve for that frustration, and that it's going to keep accumulating dysfunction over time. The whole thing will eventually go off a cliff. All the social-media game will do is make sure anyone sympathetic to the regime lives in their own echo chamber, where critical thinking is not tolerated and pulling the party line (however self-contradictory) is the only thing that matters. It is destined to fail.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Dec 19, 2015

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

VileLL posted:

how could this monumentally corrupt government use a surveillance programme to unfairly benefit their rich friends in return for a payback

the answer may surprise you

But you can do this without capitalism?

quote:

I mean I get it, it's a confusing time and it's a weird thing to think that authoritarian states might come up societal innovations that actually work and create stable societies, especially if you still think that Fukuyama was right. Spoiler alert: even Fukuyama doesnt believe in it anymore. I'm not trying to sound alarmist and I doubt that the worst kinds of abuses we see in China or Singapore will ever happen on the same scale as do there, but I really do think that what is being created there is a true novelty. An authoritarian state with nominal personal freedoms and total political oppression, which contrary to all historical precedents has a functional economy and is stable.

Congratulations, you have bought Chinese propaganda.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010


I've made a huge mistake.

Freakazoid_ posted:

THE AMERICAN WAY™ Patch Notes 1.0.2

- Presidential candidates will no longer spawn inside stars

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

The colonial French administration kind of had a problem it actually being them who was the minority in Algeria

I'm pretty sure at least half of Chinese people identify as Chinese

The majority of FLN terrorism was aimed at Muslim Algerians, however. This didn't prompt a rallying around Frenchness because terrorism is capable of working when the ruling government is unable to respond to the root political causes. This is not the case in China currently, but faith in technological terrors is misplaced.

wiregrind
Jun 26, 2013

Patch:
Criticizing the system itself (even ironically) will lower your points and your contacts' points. They will be notified as well.

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woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

Fojar38 posted:

Congratulations, you have bought Chinese propaganda.

At this point it's practically worldwide neoliberal propaganda. When China's economic ruse gets exposed everybody's going to take a hit.

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