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Ah China, such a wonderfully helpful tool in discussing impeaches of privacy and personal liberty. It's like the ball pit at the bottom of the slippery slope. The government there has created a tool that uses data collected from retailers, social networks and messaging applications, to rate a web user's loyalty to the ruling party, encouraging people to share their scores online and to compete for a higher score, with incentives for those that have them.
China has made loyalty to the government a game, and by 2020, taking part in it will be mandatory.
And if you don't like any of it, just have a nice, calming dose of SOMA.
The score is called Sesame Credit, but what is it? It's a collation of everything you do online. Your buying habits, what you do, what you say, all of it contributes to your score. Say something negative about the government, down goes your score. Buy something that's considered unapproved by the ruling party, or potentially incriminating, down goes your score.
The same goes for the media you consume. View, or (heaven forbid) actually post a picture of the Tienanmen Square incident, and your score is going to nose dive, as Extra Credits points out. On the flipside though, if you share a story about how great everything in China is, if you take part in spreading propaganda, up goes that score.
Worse yet, your score is also affected by the actions of your friends on social networks. If they buy and do anything the government doesn't like, down goes there score and yours. Combined with a scheme that encourages people to share their scores and compete for the best, that's pushing for a world where you de-friend people who aren't government supporters. It's social indoctrination on a mass scale, and it's forcing the population to do it for them. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI']
All of this is only possible because of information sharing and government surveillance too. If the likes of Tencent (which owns Riot games and invests in Blizzard and Epic) didn't share what people were saying in its games, Alibaba didn't tell the government what people were buying, and Weibo didn't inform it what people were saying, there would be no way to quantify all this information and create the scores in the first place.
And it gets so much worse, because this score means more than just social embarrassment and ostracism by friends who don't want to associate with your low score. If you have a higher score than someone else, you'll have an easier time getting a loan you need, or paperwork for travel. Though there are no negatives in place yet, they might not be necessary.
Just as games encourage people to login every day for their daily quests, daily rewards, daily lives etc. if you aren't constantly improving your Sesame Credit, you'll be falling behind everyone else.
Which is why people kick up such a fuss about companies giving information to the NSA, or GCHQ's mass surveillance, or the fact that Theresa May wants internet service providers to store their customer's browser histories for up to a year.
KitGuru Says: This is also why we railed against Steam's gamification of Steam Sales in the past. It seems like a good deal right? It seems fun or useful in the moment, but in the long run, it's taking something that should be straight forward and making it work against you. Instead of jacketed boots stomping society into submission, this new method of oppressive surveillance encourages people to toe the party line with a score.
With game publishers on board too, you know it's only a matter of time before micro-transactions to boost your score are available.
its only a matter of time before they start throwing u in jail for low scores, pathetic!!
Thank you for this great article, this is an eye opener. I’d never thought that those 1% Elite would come with such a smart idea of controlling the masses. The sad thing is, looking at this narcissistic selfish generation we are in, many people will fall for it. It is basically using this system so that you could police yourself.
You think any other generation would have been any different? Sure, they wouldn’t have used video games (in this way) a hundred or a thousand years ago, but you don’t need a ME generation to control the masses. Whether you indoctrinate by pledging your allegiance to a flag, use church, or other forms of nationalisme; the elite will find ways to control the masses.
Until people do not understand the magnitude of the perception deception they are in, no one is going to be free. There is a solution and that is an open heart revolution of perception. I don’t know if you will understand that. But I believe protest won’t do anything but information can change the world.
Another cheap attack on China. It amazes me the hypocrisy and self-aggrandisement of the West. After centuries of the most cruel, vile acts of horror on its own, and the world’s people, it has the cheek to try and denounce a progressive country for not meeting its – largely illegitimate – claims of civil liberties.
China has gone from feudal farmland to the most economically developed country in the world in less than a century. This has required some morally questionable policies along the way, but it has also enabled and enriched the Chinese people, bringing them into the modern era at a totally unprecedented pace – something which cannot be questioned.
Whilst I do not approve of many of China’s historic policies, I think Western journalists should perhaps step back, and perhaps not ask what China’s doing “wrong” compared to our “right”, but instead the reverse – after all, that’s exactly what the Chinese are doing and it’s seen them already overtake the rest of the world’s superpowers.
China is almost due for another revolution the way it’s going.
It’s the same in any country, you push the masses too hard and heads start rolling literally.
Hardly cheap, calling out social indoctrination on the largest scale ever seen
You want to root for China, be my guest, but don’t pretend that just because the west has done some bad things it therefore stands to reason that China could, should and must do too.
Remember that the vast majority of all this new wealth is under the command of a very small group of people, which is remarkably western
Yes everything they have came from us.because apple figured theycould sell 400,000,000 iphones , ge could sell 1,500,000,000 washer and dryers , theyall wanted to move to china and india to exploit and inslave people now if you go on line and look you will see that china is building its military and challenging anyone who stands in there way.I remeber watching tenamin square on tv as it happened .dont fool yourself china is after world domanation .just remember that what they have was once ours and got handed to them so a fewpeople could make more money.Its notso much as what they did its what a few powerful americans did