Where would you draw the line on protected speech? CNN admitted to misstating the news on three major stories last week - are they getting close to Alex Jones territory?
Alex Jones purposefully tells harmful lies to vulnerable people in order to get them to distrust the institutions around them so he can sell them harmful junk. It's literally his business model and it's immoral and dangerous. And he didn't even get censored, he got kicked off some platforms like twitter.
To compare him to an actual victim of censorship who was trying to get the truth out is an example of bothsidesm that is attempting to masquerade as rational thought.
I'm not trying to "bothsides." Jones is a clown. I'm trying to get people to engage their systems thinking so that we can learn lessons from China's mistakes before we go down the same exact path.
Of course they're not identical situations. Look beyond the regional cultural standards and different bodies exercising power. Notice that they're both a hegemony enforcing the status quo against their flavor of "fake news".
But one is the truth and the other is lies. Also one is getting kicked off Twitter, the other is going to prison. It's the same thing that the government could falsely arrest me tomorrow for a murder I didn't commit, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start protesting when they arrest actual murderers.
> Alex Jones purposefully tells harmful lies to vulnerable people in order to get them to distrust the institutions
He tells his share of lies. But he also tells his share of truth. No different than any other "news" organization. If he is telling lies, then point it out, debate them. Don't censor them. If lying is grounds for censorship, then every newspaper needs to be shutdown. They all lie or fabricate from time to time. Did we forget about the iraq war and the media lies that allowed it to happen? Or brian williams or the recent florence weather channel farce?
> around them so he can sell them harmful junk
How is that any different than CNN showing pharmaceuticals ad on their network to their vulnerable elderly viewership? Or news putting gambling ads? Should MSNBC or Foxnews be banned because they have soda or potato chip ads? I'd say alex jones is responsible for a minuscule amount of the harmful junk in this country compared to the mainstream media.
> And he didn't even get censored, he got kicked off some platforms like twitter.
That's called censorship.
> To compare him to an actual victim of censorship who was trying to get the truth out is an example of bothsidesm that is attempting to masquerade as rational thought.
He is a victim of censorship. You may support him being censored, but to say he wasn't censored is an outright lie. You can censor people telling truth and people telling lies. It's both censorship.
My god stop watching so much CNN. It's great that you distrust alex jones. Everyone should. But everyone should distrust all media personalities. Skepticism is a very healthy part of citizenship and democracy. And censorship is evil in a democracy. Nothing more harmful than censorship and the people who support it for their political agenda. Nazis, fascists, communists and all extremists love censorship for a reason. Democracies love free speech for a reason.
Why would they care and why should they care what we think?
They should make their own self-assessment and figure out what works form them by themselves.
Ther system evolved from different badic principles and that has arrived at diffetent conclusions.
That said, things can radically change as in Japan during WWii —> Pracetime transition, but that requires buy-in from all involved to avoid what usually happens during radical change (Tsarist to Sowiet; Dynasty —> Republic —> PRC).
How are they going to figure out what works for them? Vote for the individual who best represents their views? How exactly to individuals even get a say in "what works for them"?
That’s a bit tangential. Even if you got them all exposed to our opinions, what does that do in terms of actionability? They would be in the same place. Change has to come from within.
/s ? You are being tracked. From devices in stores that watch for wifi/Bluetooth devices to credit card companies building profiles of their card holders.
It is a system that results in rich and poor, where rich are holding stakes and incentivized to maintain and grow their status and the poor are insignificant to do anything. Then there is the vast middle class who don't see the poor but only aspires for the rich. Such system exploits human nature and has proven to be quite stable -- isn't that any society's goal after all?
It takes compassion and faith in truth, in sufficiently large doses, to challenge such systems.
Where in history has there been a system that didn't either 1) Result in rich and poor or 2) Result in oppression by force? Egalitarianism doesn't scale past around 450 people without the introduction of some form of hierarchy.
It takes compassion and faith in truth, in sufficiently large doses, to challenge such systems.
Principles can be used to challenge such systems from within. The overall history of the United States is a good example of this. Also, the history of the past several years is a testament to what happens when principles are forgotten in favor of feelings.
“Buying too much alcohol might suggest dependence; she’ll lose a couple of points.”
Credit card companies are already doing things like this.
What one of the executives there did, he looked at how people were using Canadian Tire credit cards and tracking what products they actually purchased. Then he found out that people, who for instance buy premium wild bird seed, it turns out that they very infrequently went bad on their debts. Whereas people who bought chrome accessories for their car, they walked away from their debts more frequently.
My cynical take would be that alcoholics (and other people whose self-destructive habits you could mine from their purchase behavior) would be less likely to make waves or rebel, so I'd have thought you'd lose a couple of points for never buying any alcohol... Also odd that "buying nappies" earns you points for being responsible, presumably the Great Database already knows you are a parent?
Every country has its own culture, social acknowledge. You can't understand Chinese's respect for privacy, just like Chinese can't understand American's obsession with guns.
How could it possibly not be abused to gain power? What checks and balances are there? Out of all the past data points we have throughout history, which one points to governments with unchecked power not abusing it? And is there any more powerful example of unchecked power than an unelected state single party government who can monitor every action of every individual and unvoice/unperson them with the click of a button?
The parent has the flaw that a lot of people do. They don’t seem to understand that not everyone is a mostly decent person and that there exist bad actors in any population. You can’t get away from this in any society, for example what percentage are psychopaths? That means if you create systems (like this) that eventually bad actors can exploit for themselves, they will, and they do. It’s not a conspiracy. It doesn’t happen right away. But slowly it’ll happen that the few percent can use these tools in ways to serve themselves over the interests of the wider population. (I don’t know why this is hard to comprehend, just look at the bad actors around you in your $dayjob.)
What was the reasoning behind social credit system? To keep track of bad actors or create surveillance nation?
On a side note, this is what happens when "technocrats" become the ruling class in overwhelming majority. Ability to apply technical solution to societal problems. Most of the China's ruling class are technocrats. We need anthropologists, social scientists, philosophers as law makers. Yes technocrats should be there in the mix too but they alone won't fix societal problems.
Probably both. It's no secret that China has long aspired to transform into Singapore - clean and sterile. CCP leaders have been openly talking about it for decades now. Compared to the mainland, Singapore doesn't have large issues with stuff like crime or social order. imo Singapore has achieved it via a technological Big Bro state.
China has had a "police census" for centuries. Under communism, they had the dang'an, a lifetime work record maintained by each citizen's work unit. But with a more mobile population and more private employers, the paper based dang'an system didn't scale. So, now the social credit system. It's not new, just more automated.
It's the logical continuation of what they were already doing. Nothing has fundamentally changed, the technology has gotten better, and in some cases enabled an elaboration of the Chinese police state. They're merely putting new technology to work as it becomes available.
If you want to watch for change in behavior - increasing or reducing of oppression - in the Chinese system, look at consequences and restrictions (ie applied action derived from their policing systems), rather than things like surveillance broadly. They will always max out surveillence and awareness where they can (the people de facto have no rights, so these things are not viewed as abuses of existing rights), short of becoming a liberal Western-style democracy (which isn't going to happen). The consequences and oppression/restrictions will change depending on the regime's aims, that's where you can best judge the nature of a given government that is in power.
To use a classic surveillence example - the US Government during the Hoover era didn't voluntarily restrict its reach. They were heavily limited by the technology of the day in what they could do. As technological limitations lifted, the expansion of surveillence leapt forward accordingly. Nothing actually changed, Hoover would have been doing what the NSA is doing today, if he had the technology back then.
I'm speaking as a Chinese citizen who is totally in favor of this. Here's some perspective I can give:
"credit system" is far less established than countries like US, and private companies are generally much less trusted by the government and by the people (which is the opposite to the US). Some big private companies like Alibaba has started to create credit systems themselves, but the state owned banks and law enforcement would only use something backed by the government.
The "social credit system" it actually not that different from other credit systems excepted it is managed by government. It's really needed now given that there was a rising debt default problem -> Without a credit system, many people thought they can just delete the app where they borrowed money and get away with it. It became a crisis when a lot of this happened at the same time.
Surveillance is a separate topic. It's one of the technology advances that made law enforcement easier (like DNA samples are much more used nowadays in identifying criminals). There has been reports that criminals being captured with these new tools. It's something that western people fears a lot, so all the western reports focuses on the negative side of it and exaggerate it many times more.
That’s not how the system works, only what the western propaganda wants people to believe. I’m sure I won’t be punished because of saying i oppose that. It's only possible that I get some kind of punishment if I'm influential enough and engage in activities that deemed to be a threat to the government.
First of all, how do you know for a fact that the government doesn't publish everyone who speaks out, or is not moving in that direction? Speech certainly has become far more restricted in the last few years.
But even if what you say is true, it means that that speaking out has no impact on governmental policy, since if you start to have influence on the public you get shut up. And if that is the case, why should anyone ever bother to speak out.
Why don't you just admit it, you like living in a dictatorship.
Aren't you worried the silencing of dissent will hide a very dysfunctional world from you? Aren't you worried it has happened already and your opinion has already been influenced?
I’m sure there are darker side of China that the government would love to hide and there are many parts of the society that’s disfunctional. That’s no secret in China, most people are aware about that. I’m sure my opinions are influenced by all the stuff I’ve read and seen, and I try to keep an open eye and have been traveling around the world. But no one has “god’s view”, most western media are also writing articles that supports their existing views. “Fake news” is no longer a new concept to the west and it indeed can distort people’s beliefs. Even when media report the truth, selecting what to report and choosing the tone can also influence people’s views to a great extent. When it comes to topics about China, the western media (and Chinese media as well, in a different way) can be quite extreme. I’m sure your opinions are also being influenced, it’s too hard not to be
As much as it seems like a foreign concept, I wonder what parallels can we derive from a state-backed social credit system to say something like our corporate-backed financial credit scores. We see that companies from health insurers to cell phone providers are already adopting skimming through your or your demographic's purchase history to see if you are worthy of success or not.
Not defending China, but boogeymen pieces like this evoke responses like this is a truly non-western concept and not just a "hardcore" version of what we have
If it stopped corruption, and nepotism I might not be so opposed to this invasive immoral technology.
I grew up not liking to be photographed. It was a combination of being homely, but it was more? There's probally a deeper psychological reason? I got through college, and high school with only one picture of myself.
I've noticed when I'm out and about; I'm very aware of cameras. I'm aware of the shutterbug. Hell, I used to use that word in a endearing way?
Not anymore. I find myself judging people over the amount of pictures they snap daily. I know most of it's good natured.
I wouldn't be suprised to see the fear of being photographed in the DSM. It's probally already there?
As usual, I'm yacking as a semi-spoiled American. I should be commenting on the article.
This brief article did affected me. I know China is a Communist country. I just imagine the future, and it doesn't look rosy.
My hope is we (USA) pass more privacy laws.
My hope is one day the person who pulls out the camera/phone will be socially frowned upon.
I thought it might be the next social fau pau, but it isn't? At least in my part of the world?
I'm genuinely curious to see how this works out. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm not part of it - but I can't help be fascinated.
Growing up, we cared what the neighbours thought. They were our "social score". If we skipped school, it'd be noticed. If we misbehaved, they knew it. And little old ladies ensured bad news travelled faster that twitter.
Now life feels anonymous, and it feels like this has been lost. Anonymity, while sometimes valuable, often leads to toxic behaviour online. A lot of things we'd never have dreamt of doing with the 'old lady brigade' judging us. And now the real world feels much more anonymous, and I fear the same happening here too.
On the face of it, it seems like China have figured out how to scale the little old ladies. This could be horribly interesting, or simply horrible. But I think I'm glad to see someone (else) give it a shot.
I can’t understand why anybody would be glad. People in China will have their lives ruined by this. This kind of thing has been bad when any previous authoritarian regime did it. So tracking/controlling people doesn’t just become okay or potentially good because you’re using computers. The Stasi etc would’ve loved this.
As a Chinese citizen who lived in the US for a while, I'm totally in favor of this, and especially when I go back to China. We don't value "freedom" as much as most westerners, and the social credit system is there to make existing laws better enforced, so bad actors can really get punished as they should.
There are hundreds of thousands currently sitting (possibly dying) in "reeducation camps" in Xinjiang, I guess they don't value "freedom" either. The social credit system is just a continuation of the current authoritarian controls, and will be used to further chill any chance of dissenting opinion. This might be fine to you individually if you find yourself on the right side of everything, but clearly not everyone does.
Well, probably not for them if they actually exists.
I don't find myself on the right of everything, I also don't do stuff that's breaking the laws. I'm in favor since I believe the system has more benefit than its downside. Credit system provided by private companies just won't work as much.
Replace "reeducation camps in Xinjiang" with "projects in Philadelphia" and "social credit system" with "private credit ratings" and you see that we're not as unlike as we thought. Yes, the scope and severity of the situation is more blatant in the Chinese example, but pointing fingers overlooks that we have similar problems brought about by similar causes in the West. Moreover, we already have these systems in place, and we treat them like oracles. How many poor in the West will never get a chance to be anything else because they get stuck in a system that only sees them as an unnecessary risk? I'm not claiming either system is good or bad. I'm saying both systems are similar and will have similar benefits and pitfalls.
I would ask Westerners to look long and hard at our financial credit systems and ask whether they allow dissent or whether we have simply accepted that dissent is a largely fruitless endeavor.
Whoa whoa whoa, just because both systems have problems and have some similarities doesn't mean no one can complain. I'm not gonna defend the US's problems because it doesn't matter! It's easy to see the Chinese system as morally bad. Why? Because free speech and dissent are the mechanisms by which we improve our ideas and systems. This social credit system backed by the already authoritarian government will further cement the will of the party powers over the will of the people. And everyone should care about a billion people.
We're agreeing. My point is that we should care about a billion people in China and a billion people in the West and billions everywhere. You're right that free speech and dissent are how we make change. I'm questioning the Western perspective because it seems like free speech and dissent are reaching limits as well. Dissent as you like, it probably won't work, and you'll probably suffer consequences in the commercial sphere, albeit not formally in the political or national spheres. We should keep complaining until it gets better. I just wonder if the complaints ever get heard in good faith.
While bad actors being punished is important, there is a constant trade-off for ensuring good actors aren't punished. Ideas like trial by jury and innocent until proven guilty try to address this because the judge of good and bad is essential. I assume you don't see government dissent as bad, because social credit and constant surveillance will discourage and punish these good actors. And with a system like this setup, more nefarious, corrupt, and oppressive uses could occur eventually. And with China known for its corruption and brutal authority, I am surprised you are so confident the government won't continuously abuse this power if not now than in the future.
Every system we've come up with has winners and losers. Sad but true.
But basically I don't believe we're on a healthy path at the moment. While I don't think this system would work for us either, from a purely nerd standpoint it's interesting to see some experimentation. Whether it works or not, we can learn something from it either way.
Didn't we have this exact same story yesterday? And the day before? And the day before that?
When the EU, Australia and Canada does it, the news frames it positively as combating "hate" speech. When china does it, it's digital dictatorship.
For an industry, especially so in australia, that loves censorship and digital dictatorship, the media sure do love to criticize china about theirs. Maybe it's just envy.
Defenders say this is just the latest version of traditional Chinese ways, but that is not the case. Traditionally social trust and good behavior was enforced by the whole network of social relations and basic values.
But in the modern era this has broken down, in part because China has gone through 4 different basic political and economic systems in the last century, and is now on its fifth.
So the government is now trying to enforce good behavior and social trust from the top down. Unfortunately, unlike in Confucianism, there is no way to ensure the people at the top are trustworthy, so the whole thing will likely become quite dysfunctional at some point.
Let me add a couple of points. Chinese defend this system in part because if they were to criticize it they would be punished by the government. But beyond that, in China there is no real thought about or discussion of basic political philosophy and so people don't even know how to go about it, they can only repeat what they have been told.
There are so many things wrong with China and the world today, there is simply no reason to make things up, and much of what is in this piece is wild speculation or outright fabrication, belittling the real struggles of some featured in it.
The results will absolutely be total success. How could it result in anything but success? Anyone who complains about any aspect of the social score system will have their score lowered until they are effectively silenced.
Marginalizing minority views and other edge-cases is a feature of the system.
I feel very sad that there is likely to be an entire generation of Chinese whom are crushed into the most extreme pressure to conform and obey.
62 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] thread>In 2015, Hu lost a defamation case after he accused an official of extortion.
>Hu’s social media accounts, where he published much of his investigative journalism, have also been shut down.
Of course they're not identical situations. Look beyond the regional cultural standards and different bodies exercising power. Notice that they're both a hegemony enforcing the status quo against their flavor of "fake news".
He tells his share of lies. But he also tells his share of truth. No different than any other "news" organization. If he is telling lies, then point it out, debate them. Don't censor them. If lying is grounds for censorship, then every newspaper needs to be shutdown. They all lie or fabricate from time to time. Did we forget about the iraq war and the media lies that allowed it to happen? Or brian williams or the recent florence weather channel farce?
> around them so he can sell them harmful junk
How is that any different than CNN showing pharmaceuticals ad on their network to their vulnerable elderly viewership? Or news putting gambling ads? Should MSNBC or Foxnews be banned because they have soda or potato chip ads? I'd say alex jones is responsible for a minuscule amount of the harmful junk in this country compared to the mainstream media.
> And he didn't even get censored, he got kicked off some platforms like twitter.
That's called censorship.
> To compare him to an actual victim of censorship who was trying to get the truth out is an example of bothsidesm that is attempting to masquerade as rational thought.
He is a victim of censorship. You may support him being censored, but to say he wasn't censored is an outright lie. You can censor people telling truth and people telling lies. It's both censorship.
My god stop watching so much CNN. It's great that you distrust alex jones. Everyone should. But everyone should distrust all media personalities. Skepticism is a very healthy part of citizenship and democracy. And censorship is evil in a democracy. Nothing more harmful than censorship and the people who support it for their political agenda. Nazis, fascists, communists and all extremists love censorship for a reason. Democracies love free speech for a reason.
They should make their own self-assessment and figure out what works form them by themselves.
Ther system evolved from different badic principles and that has arrived at diffetent conclusions.
That said, things can radically change as in Japan during WWii —> Pracetime transition, but that requires buy-in from all involved to avoid what usually happens during radical change (Tsarist to Sowiet; Dynasty —> Republic —> PRC).
It takes compassion and faith in truth, in sufficiently large doses, to challenge such systems.
It takes compassion and faith in truth, in sufficiently large doses, to challenge such systems.
Principles can be used to challenge such systems from within. The overall history of the United States is a good example of this. Also, the history of the past several years is a testament to what happens when principles are forgotten in favor of feelings.
Credit card companies are already doing things like this.
What one of the executives there did, he looked at how people were using Canadian Tire credit cards and tracking what products they actually purchased. Then he found out that people, who for instance buy premium wild bird seed, it turns out that they very infrequently went bad on their debts. Whereas people who bought chrome accessories for their car, they walked away from their debts more frequently.
https://www.marketplace.org/2009/05/15/business/how-credit-c...
On a side note, this is what happens when "technocrats" become the ruling class in overwhelming majority. Ability to apply technical solution to societal problems. Most of the China's ruling class are technocrats. We need anthropologists, social scientists, philosophers as law makers. Yes technocrats should be there in the mix too but they alone won't fix societal problems.
My reading is that they're worried about their explosive GDP growth leveling out and the political instability a debt crisis might cause.
If you want to watch for change in behavior - increasing or reducing of oppression - in the Chinese system, look at consequences and restrictions (ie applied action derived from their policing systems), rather than things like surveillance broadly. They will always max out surveillence and awareness where they can (the people de facto have no rights, so these things are not viewed as abuses of existing rights), short of becoming a liberal Western-style democracy (which isn't going to happen). The consequences and oppression/restrictions will change depending on the regime's aims, that's where you can best judge the nature of a given government that is in power.
To use a classic surveillence example - the US Government during the Hoover era didn't voluntarily restrict its reach. They were heavily limited by the technology of the day in what they could do. As technological limitations lifted, the expansion of surveillence leapt forward accordingly. Nothing actually changed, Hoover would have been doing what the NSA is doing today, if he had the technology back then.
"credit system" is far less established than countries like US, and private companies are generally much less trusted by the government and by the people (which is the opposite to the US). Some big private companies like Alibaba has started to create credit systems themselves, but the state owned banks and law enforcement would only use something backed by the government.
The "social credit system" it actually not that different from other credit systems excepted it is managed by government. It's really needed now given that there was a rising debt default problem -> Without a credit system, many people thought they can just delete the app where they borrowed money and get away with it. It became a crisis when a lot of this happened at the same time.
Surveillance is a separate topic. It's one of the technology advances that made law enforcement easier (like DNA samples are much more used nowadays in identifying criminals). There has been reports that criminals being captured with these new tools. It's something that western people fears a lot, so all the western reports focuses on the negative side of it and exaggerate it many times more.
But if you were opposed and spoke out, you would be punished, so why should we trust you to be saying what you really believe?
But even if what you say is true, it means that that speaking out has no impact on governmental policy, since if you start to have influence on the public you get shut up. And if that is the case, why should anyone ever bother to speak out.
Why don't you just admit it, you like living in a dictatorship.
Not defending China, but boogeymen pieces like this evoke responses like this is a truly non-western concept and not just a "hardcore" version of what we have
I grew up not liking to be photographed. It was a combination of being homely, but it was more? There's probally a deeper psychological reason? I got through college, and high school with only one picture of myself.
I've noticed when I'm out and about; I'm very aware of cameras. I'm aware of the shutterbug. Hell, I used to use that word in a endearing way?
Not anymore. I find myself judging people over the amount of pictures they snap daily. I know most of it's good natured.
I wouldn't be suprised to see the fear of being photographed in the DSM. It's probally already there?
As usual, I'm yacking as a semi-spoiled American. I should be commenting on the article.
This brief article did affected me. I know China is a Communist country. I just imagine the future, and it doesn't look rosy.
My hope is we (USA) pass more privacy laws.
My hope is one day the person who pulls out the camera/phone will be socially frowned upon.
I thought it might be the next social fau pau, but it isn't? At least in my part of the world?
I'm rambling, and sorry--not feeling well today.
Growing up, we cared what the neighbours thought. They were our "social score". If we skipped school, it'd be noticed. If we misbehaved, they knew it. And little old ladies ensured bad news travelled faster that twitter.
Now life feels anonymous, and it feels like this has been lost. Anonymity, while sometimes valuable, often leads to toxic behaviour online. A lot of things we'd never have dreamt of doing with the 'old lady brigade' judging us. And now the real world feels much more anonymous, and I fear the same happening here too.
On the face of it, it seems like China have figured out how to scale the little old ladies. This could be horribly interesting, or simply horrible. But I think I'm glad to see someone (else) give it a shot.
I don't find myself on the right of everything, I also don't do stuff that's breaking the laws. I'm in favor since I believe the system has more benefit than its downside. Credit system provided by private companies just won't work as much.
I would ask Westerners to look long and hard at our financial credit systems and ask whether they allow dissent or whether we have simply accepted that dissent is a largely fruitless endeavor.
But basically I don't believe we're on a healthy path at the moment. While I don't think this system would work for us either, from a purely nerd standpoint it's interesting to see some experimentation. Whether it works or not, we can learn something from it either way.
When the EU, Australia and Canada does it, the news frames it positively as combating "hate" speech. When china does it, it's digital dictatorship.
For an industry, especially so in australia, that loves censorship and digital dictatorship, the media sure do love to criticize china about theirs. Maybe it's just envy.
But in the modern era this has broken down, in part because China has gone through 4 different basic political and economic systems in the last century, and is now on its fifth.
So the government is now trying to enforce good behavior and social trust from the top down. Unfortunately, unlike in Confucianism, there is no way to ensure the people at the top are trustworthy, so the whole thing will likely become quite dysfunctional at some point.
There are so many things wrong with China and the world today, there is simply no reason to make things up, and much of what is in this piece is wild speculation or outright fabrication, belittling the real struggles of some featured in it.
More: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/seeing-chinese-social-cred...
Marginalizing minority views and other edge-cases is a feature of the system.
I feel very sad that there is likely to be an entire generation of Chinese whom are crushed into the most extreme pressure to conform and obey.
#Resist #QuestionAuthority #Disobey