BrainDance posted:

You get on the train and the little intercom message says the whole "dont smoke dont spit otherwise you will be punished and it'll affect your social credit score" thing, which is fine because really don't smoke or spit on the train.

MarcusSA posted:

That’s an actual message that plays on the train?

Atopian posted:

I suspect I'm going to regret posting, but:

Social credit is a real thing, and it is significantly less sinister than it is generally reported as in the west.
Does China do sinister stuff to its citizens? Sure does, it's a state, but by the time you get to that level it's court orders, not apps and points.

How can social credit influence people's lives?

1: you can be living in some stupid city with some stupid initiatives that you can get points for. In Beijing, as noted, reading. In other cities it's recycling. Or whatever. These points are disconnected from the other stuff. Different system, same general name.

2: if you are 'convicted' (equivalent term) of certain types of fraud, failure to pay serious debts, stuff like that, you may be barred from either air travel or high-speed rail travel, or both. Note that this still explicitly leaves slow trains open. It has been suggested that it is intended to be a punishment for irresponsible business people, since most others wouldn't give a drat, but that's nothing official or sourcable. Technically a points system but actually not really, more of a y/n.

3: if you want to get your children into a different/better primary or middle school that you would ordinarily do based on your address, your entire criminal record is examined, *including* stuff that wouldn't be considered criminal in the west, like speeding tickets and other minor fines. This *is* explicitly a points system, and although it is not (yet?) tracked nationally, the system is semi-unified in terms of points gained for particular problems.

4: if you are Party, you gain some privileges (like being able to continue your career above a certain level in many sectors), but with it you gain several responsibilities, not least of which is dealing with whatever stupid poo poo your regional boss comes up with to look busy, which can include points systems and is the source of a lot of the crazier sounding requirements reported in the west. Regional, party-focused.


The stuff about credit based on your friends / contacts is, as far as I know, all commercial credit scoring stuff like lol Ant or whatever.
I'm sure that the government does passively monitor associations via social media, because they're a government, but it's not something that is presented to citizens, and it's not part of the above systems.

About those government position papers mentioned earlier:
That sort of poo poo comes out all of the time. A lot of it goes nowhere. The stuff that goes somewhere, usually does so a decade or more down the line.
They can be earnest proposals, or testing the water, some mid-level rando trying to get party cred, or other stuff.
People have this idea that the chinese government is some sort of monolith but nah. You could mine for almost any position if you just ran through enough government papers, and so that's what it seems reporters do sometimes, with translation as a barrier.
When you're viewing way less than a single percentage point of an information source, it's ultimately up to the person translating and presenting it to you what you see.

This has been my second post in D&D, and I hope it is my last. Probably won't be.

Atopian posted:

I suspect I'm going to regret posting, but:

Social credit is a real thing, and it is significantly less sinister than it is generally reported as in the west.
Does China do sinister stuff to its citizens? Sure does, it's a state, but by the time you get to that level it's court orders, not apps and points.

How can social credit influence people's lives?

1: you can be living in some stupid city with some stupid initiatives that you can get points for. In Beijing, as noted, reading. In other cities it's recycling. Or whatever. These points are disconnected from the other stuff. Different system, same general name.

2: if you are 'convicted' (equivalent term) of certain types of fraud, failure to pay serious debts, stuff like that, you may be barred from either air travel or high-speed rail travel, or both. Note that this still explicitly leaves slow trains open. It has been suggested that it is intended to be a punishment for irresponsible business people, since most others wouldn't give a drat, but that's nothing official or sourcable. Technically a points system but actually not really, more of a y/n.

3: if you want to get your children into a different/better primary or middle school that you would ordinarily do based on your address, your entire criminal record is examined, *including* stuff that wouldn't be considered criminal in the west, like speeding tickets and other minor fines. This *is* explicitly a points system, and although it is not (yet?) tracked nationally, the system is semi-unified in terms of points gained for particular problems.

4: if you are Party, you gain some privileges (like being able to continue your career above a certain level in many sectors), but with it you gain several responsibilities, not least of which is dealing with whatever stupid poo poo your regional boss comes up with to look busy, which can include points systems and is the source of a lot of the crazier sounding requirements reported in the west. Regional, party-focused.


The stuff about credit based on your friends / contacts is, as far as I know, all commercial credit scoring stuff like lol Ant or whatever.
I'm sure that the government does passively monitor associations via social media, because they're a government, but it's not something that is presented to citizens, and it's not part of the above systems.

About those government position papers mentioned earlier:
That sort of poo poo comes out all of the time. A lot of it goes nowhere. The stuff that goes somewhere, usually does so a decade or more down the line.
They can be earnest proposals, or testing the water, some mid-level rando trying to get party cred, or other stuff.
People have this idea that the chinese government is some sort of monolith but nah. You could mine for almost any position if you just ran through enough government papers, and so that's what it seems reporters do sometimes, with translation as a barrier.
When you're viewing way less than a single percentage point of an information source, it's ultimately up to the person translating and presenting it to you what you see.

This has been my second post in D&D, and I hope it is my last. Probably won't be.

Discendo Vox posted:

You have 16 posts just in this thread.

Discendo Vox posted:

You have 16 posts just in this thread. FWIW most of the things on that list are already pretty horrifying.

Atopian posted:

drat lol. Must have wandered into it by a link or something, or just forgotten.
Well, I'll correct that.

quote:

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has given her first interview to an independent media organisation since she alleged on Weibo that a senior Chinese official had coerced her into sex, saying it was an “enormous misunderstanding”.

The interview with French sports daily L’Équipe came as the International Olympic Committee said it wasn’t up to them or anyone else “to judge, in one way or another, her position”.

Spectators wearing T-shirts supporting Peng Shuai
IOC president vows to support Peng Shuai over sexual harassment allegations
Read more
Peng disappeared from public life after the Weibo post in November, sparking a major international campaign calling for confirmation from the Chinese authorities that she was safe and well.

Speaking to L’Équipe in Beijing, Peng said her original statement had been misunderstood. She said she had never accused former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault and denied she had disappeared from public view afterwards.

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The tennis star was accompanied to the interview by the Chinese Olympic Committee’s chief of staff who also acted as translator, the report said. L’Équipe was also required to submit questions in advance and publish her comments verbatim in question-and-answer form, as preconditions for the interview.

Peng thanked everyone for caring about her wellbeing, but also questioned why it had been “exaggerated”.

“I didn’t think there would be such concern and I would like to know: why such concern?” she said.

Peng said there had been a “enormous misunderstanding” over her post, which she confirmed she deleted herself a little under 30 minutes after publishing it because she “wanted to”. She did not give further details.

In early November Peng posted an essay to Weibo, describing an on-again-off-again consensual affair with the then 75-year-old, and an incident in which he allegedly pressured her into having sex after inviting her to his house to play tennis with him and his wife.

Amid what she described as “complicated feelings”, they allegedly rekindled the affair, until an argument and his failure to meet her shortly before the post.

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In the L’Équipe interview, Peng reiterated comments she gave to a Singaporean state-controlled outlet in December, saying

I hope that we no longer distort the meaning of this post. And I also hope that we don’t add more hype on this,” she said. “I never said anyone sexually assaulted me.”

In her post Peng had described Zhang pressing her into having sex and her not agreeing, before relenting.

“After dinner I still did not want to, and you said you hated me! You also said that in these seven years, you never forgot me and that you would be good for me etc etc,” she wrote according to a translation by What’s On Weibo.

“I was afraid and panicked and carrying the emotions of seven year ago, I agreed … yes, we had sex.”

The post went viral despite its quick removal from Weibo. With efforts to contact Peng proving fruitless, and the topic completely censored inside China, the head of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Steve Simon went public with his concern for her welfare, and global tennis stars began advocating under the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai.

he saga remained off limits to people inside China, with blanket censorship banning even social media posts about “tennis”.

Almost three weeks later China’s external English-language state media began disputing the global concerns, publishing a translation of an email said to be from Peng to Simon – and which Peng later said she did write – and videos of several apparently choreographed public appearances.

In the interview with L’Équipe, Peng also said she “never disappeared” and she didn’t know why such concern spread.

“It’s just that a lot of people, like my friends, including from the IOC, messaged me, and it was quite impossible to reply to so many messages,” she said, adding that she had responded to emails from friends and the WTA but she had difficulty accessing the organisation’s online communications system.

Also on Monday the International Olympic Committee announced its president, Thomas Bach, had met with Peng face to face on Saturday, alongside former chair of the Athletes’ Commission and IOC member Kirsty Coventry.

“During the dinner, the three spoke about their common experience as athletes at the Olympic Games, and Peng Shuai spoke of her disappointment at not being able to qualify for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020,” a statement said. It added that Peng had accepted an invitation to meet again in Europe and to stay in contact with Coventry.

The statement did not mention the allegations or Bach’s recent comments that he would support her if she wanted an investigation into Zhang.

At a press conference on Monday, spokesperson Mark Adams said the IOC as a sports organisation was doing “everything we can to ensure she is happy”.

“I don’t think it’s up to us to be able to judge in one way, just as it’s not for you to judge, in one way or another, her position,” he said.

Despite multiple attempts by the WTA, only the IOC has been able to meet with Peng.

Questions have previously been raised about the IOC’s handling of the matter, with the organisation accused of too readily accepting Chinese government assurances as to Peng’s welfare ahead of the Winter Olympics.

In her interview Peng urged against combining sport and politics, a key message of Beijing during the Olympics as it faces widespread scrutiny and criticism over its human rights records, with diplomatic boycotts and social media campaigns for commercial or viewing boycotts.

“My sentimental problems, my private life, should not be involved in sports and politics,” she said.

“Sport must not be politicised because when it is, most of the time that amounts to turning one’s back on the Olympic spirit, and it goes against the will of the world of sport and of the athletes.”

fart simpson posted:

I will say a lot of the boogeyman of China's social credit score strikes me as funny given how invasive, opaque, and oppressive the US credit score system is

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Smeef posted:

Everyone hates the US credit reporting and scoring system, though, and sees it as a boogeyman, too. And it only uses financial variables, is formally only meant to be used for underwriting (though misused for far more), and was created and is operated by private companies that — while far more influential and powerful than they should be — have nowhere near the power of a state.

People are right to be wary of a system that would in some ways be comparable yet would add more variables (including non-financial variables), expand the scope to far more than underwriting, and house it within institutions with even more power, where the consequences could be even greater and the checks and balances even fewer. Hell, just adding zipcodes to FICO-type data would recreate redlining and could do so in a way that is obscured by machine learning.

Xarn posted:

Messing with child's education because of their (grand)parents was a classic communist EE move. It sucked but then and it sucks now too.

Centrist Committee posted:

What does EE mean?

Centrist Committee posted:

What does EE mean?

Smeef posted:

People are right to be wary of a system that would in some ways be comparable yet would add more variables (including non-financial variables), expand the scope to far more than underwriting, and house it within institutions with even more power, where the consequences could be even greater and the checks and balances even fewer. Hell, just adding zipcodes to FICO-type data would recreate redlining and could do so in a way that is obscured by machine learning.

Somaen posted:

Attention: calling all tankie rape apologists to the thread to defend China. This is not a drill. Grab your battle whattabouts.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/07/peng-shuai-says-weibo-post-sparked-enormous-misunderstanding

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Somaen posted:

Attention: calling all tankie rape apologists to the thread to defend China. This is not a drill. Grab your battle whattabouts.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/07/peng-shuai-says-weibo-post-sparked-enormous-misunderstanding

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Smeef posted:

Here's an interview about this very topic that recently dropped. I haven't listened to it yet, but the interviews I've heard on this podcast before are good. Edit, forgot the link: https://supchina.com/2022/02/03/how-chinas-laws-and-social-credit-system-actually-work-explained-by-jeremy-daum/

Are you still arguing that it doesn't even exist? I'm pretty sure you're the only person in this entire exchange who is questioning its very existence.

There is overwhelming, credible evidence that this system exists and is not just some curiosity of a T4 local government. The lack of direct experience from goons is more a reminder that we have no mainland Chinese posters here (to my knowledge) and few posters with actual China experience, and thus a tiny, non-representative sample to work with. I'm not writing off their experience, because it's my experience, too. But I'll be the first to say that despite having never encountered this system personally, it's pretty obvious that it is a Thing.

quote:

Kaiser: So, let’s clear on this. I mean, there is a Social Credit System. There are pilot programs in multiple areas that have something that is without a policy described as a Social Credit System. So, what is it and what is it not, in where we are today in January 2022? What is its reality?

Jeremy: Yeah, the Social Credit System is real, but when I describe it to people, they’ll say, “Well, so you’re saying the Social Credit System isn’t real?” Because they have such a firm notion of what that phrase means.

Kaiser: Right.

Jeremy: What it really is, is sort of a regulatory credit check system. It’s primarily aimed at businesses, not at individuals. And social credit is pretty routinely defined as a measure of people’s compliance with laws and legal obligations. So, it’s not a holistic measure of all your behavior. It’s not an algorithmic formulation based on what you did online, what you bought, who your friends are, what you said, what you posted about. It measures whether or not you’ve received administrative punishments, criminal punishments, whether you’ve applied for permits, or a registered a business, things like this.

So, most of the information going into it is what they call public credit information, which is information created or collected by the government in the course of its normal business. So that’s to say that the creation of the idea of the Social Credit System didn’t involve collecting much more information.

What it did involve was sharing information between regulatory agencies, and they’re now making it so that if you violated say a food safety law… In the past, you might… The food safety regulators would know that that had happened, but it’s now available for the public to see in most cases. And also, other regulatory agencies will see this.

Atopian posted:

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Why did you bold the section where she brought a translator?

Smeef posted:

Everyone hates the US credit reporting and scoring system, though, and sees it as a boogeyman, too. And it only uses financial variables, is formally only meant to be used for underwriting (though misused for far more), and was created and is operated by private companies that — while far more influential and powerful than they should be — have nowhere near the power of a state.

People are right to be wary of a system that would in some ways be comparable yet would add more variables (including non-financial variables), expand the scope to far more than underwriting, and house it within institutions with even more power, where the consequences could be even greater and the checks and balances even fewer. Hell, just adding zipcodes to FICO-type data would recreate redlining and could do so in a way that is obscured by machine learning.

therobit posted:

The problem with US credit reporting is really when it is being used to make decisions about things other than if someone is a good credit risk. It is statistically speaking very good at predicting future payment behavior based on past payment behavior, and is also updated as payment trends change and as variables are emphasized or de-emphasized based on more current data. But a person can be really good at paying bills on time and still be bad at their job, and vice versa. FICO scores are not meant to be used to determine employment or insurance decisions, and they miss a lot of important variables for those because that isn’t what they are designed to measure.

Red and Black posted:

Also lol at the part in bold. I wonder why so many would come to that conclusion after hearing what the "social credit system" actually is in practice

Red and Black posted:

Out of curiosity, what was the general reaction in this thread 2-3 years ago when the western media initially reported on the non-existant “social credit system” which assigned a number to every citizen that could be raised or lowered based based on desirable or undesirable behavior?

Was there skepticism? Was it largely accepted unquestioningly? Have those who accepted it at the time learned to be more skeptical of these kinds of narratives?

MikeC posted:

These past two pages have devolved into strawman arguments where posters keep talking about some wide spread belief in some orwellian system countrywide when exactly one person (CommieGIR) made that assertion that was quickly shut down by everyone.

MikeC posted:

Why don't you scroll back yourself and find out.

MikeC posted:

But there is one really good thing about the US Satan vs the PRC Satan. The US Satan doesn't jail you for burning the US flag, saying the US is poo poo, saying that the system should be overthrown. We can have internet forums where we spew bullshit without government censors deciding what can or cannot be published. Want to start a religious cult? Go ahead. You can march on the street as a BLM member and riot and burn down buildings to protest the unequal treatment of ethnic groups. You can be a Trump nutjob and storm the capital building. Unless you were a ringleader, nothing is probably going to happen to you. If the CCP was in charge, you and all your friends would all be in jail or some reeducation camp for posting poo poo against the government. Or at the very least your social credit rating would tank to the point where you couldn't get any kind of service and you would effectively be ostracized. Started some religious/spiritual cult? Time to crack down with persecution and torture! BLM riots? LoL, roll in the tanks, please.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

It is extremely widespread. -100 social credit is like THE standard thing to say to chinese people (or just anyone that looks asian at all) on the internet under every video or anything they ever make.

"Social credit score" and "winnie the pooh is banned" are like the two things people "know" about china when they want to be extremely lovely. And beyond that the general way a lot of people get information about china is hearing one news story of a thing that happened once and then deciding that is a core fundamental part of chinese people's lives.

Red and Black posted:

He straight up asked me to do it 🤷

and in any case, isn't running in here to declare breathlessly that nobody believes in this or that model of a credit system existing in China, whilst having expressly held that view just a few months prior, something of a sign of bad faith?

Atopian posted:

I suspect I'm going to regret posting, but:

Social credit is a real thing, and it is significantly less sinister than it is generally reported as in the west.
Does China do sinister stuff to its citizens? Sure does, it's a state, but by the time you get to that level it's court orders, not apps and points.

How can social credit influence people's lives?

1: you can be living in some stupid city with some stupid initiatives that you can get points for. In Beijing, as noted, reading. In other cities it's recycling. Or whatever. These points are disconnected from the other stuff. Different system, same general name.

2: if you are 'convicted' (equivalent term) of certain types of fraud, failure to pay serious debts, stuff like that, you may be barred from either air travel or high-speed rail travel, or both. Note that this still explicitly leaves slow trains open. It has been suggested that it is intended to be a punishment for irresponsible business people, since most others wouldn't give a drat, but that's nothing official or sourcable. Technically a points system but actually not really, more of a y/n.

3: if you want to get your children into a different/better primary or middle school that you would ordinarily do based on your address, your entire criminal record is examined, *including* stuff that wouldn't be considered criminal in the west, like speeding tickets and other minor fines. This *is* explicitly a points system, and although it is not (yet?) tracked nationally, the system is semi-unified in terms of points gained for particular problems.

4: if you are Party, you gain some privileges (like being able to continue your career above a certain level in many sectors), but with it you gain several responsibilities, not least of which is dealing with whatever stupid poo poo your regional boss comes up with to look busy, which can include points systems and is the source of a lot of the crazier sounding requirements reported in the west. Regional, party-focused.


The stuff about credit based on your friends / contacts is, as far as I know, all commercial credit scoring stuff like lol Ant or whatever.
I'm sure that the government does passively monitor associations via social media, because they're a government, but it's not something that is presented to citizens, and it's not part of the above systems.

About those government position papers mentioned earlier:
That sort of poo poo comes out all of the time. A lot of it goes nowhere. The stuff that goes somewhere, usually does so a decade or more down the line.
They can be earnest proposals, or testing the water, some mid-level rando trying to get party cred, or other stuff.
People have this idea that the chinese government is some sort of monolith but nah. You could mine for almost any position if you just ran through enough government papers, and so that's what it seems reporters do sometimes, with translation as a barrier.
When you're viewing way less than a single percentage point of an information source, it's ultimately up to the person translating and presenting it to you what you see.

This has been my second post in D&D, and I hope it is my last. Probably won't be.

Red and Black posted:

If one has a "score" that "tanks" after going to a protest, that sort of implies that they had a higher score prior to coming under the notice of the state at said protest. Which in turn implies that it is a universal thing.

If you were just trying to say that those who go to protests are marked for surveillance and punishment there are plenty of more natural ways to get that across without referencing an ubiquitous social credit number. But that is exactly what you did and now you're trying to backtrack