...it practically makes Facebook look a "patriot bar", circa 1765.
China is pioneering a social control plan right out of 1983 (before things really heated up in 1984,) and I fear it might know exactly how to market it to Millennials - wrap it in a veneer of social media egomania.
China plans to begin attributing "values" to all citizens by launching a social media network that will carefully collect data points on every individual, put this information through an impersonal algorithm, and spit out a "Citizen Rating" on the other side. This rating is not unlike a credit score, and effectively boils down your entire existence to one single, 3-digit number.
Like a US FICO credit score, only even more sinister.
The Wall Street Journal obtained and released documents detailing the proposed inputs for this rating system, and although they maintain the veneer of relative appropriateness, I'm here to tell you this is an Orwellian nightmare
I highlighted the contributing factors above, color-coding them into relative levels of personal disdain.
I'm sorry, but that is horrifying.
The ones I highlighted in green, most people can be sort of OK with.
Yellow is getting questionable. Effectively, we're deciding human value at the yellow level by rating you on your ability to repay loans (make long-term, complex financial decisions) and your ability to conform to fascist dictates about how many children you are allowed to have and when.
At Red, we veer directly into the text of "Animal Farm". We start rating people on their "family devotion", "shopping habits", "wrong-think opinions" and what online trolls say about them. This is so subjective it's practically a handbook for oppression.
As you can see above, they fully intend to cut you off from most forms of credit, the internet, and social services themselves if they decide that you belong in the undesirable category. Naturally, they have left a massive amount of "judgment" in the determining of who is engaging in "wrong-think/speak", so they'll find a way to put you there if they want you there.
Sure seems like a great way to close budget deficits that will likely be ballooning very soon - simply declare any undesirables to be in violation of your "Social policy", then cut them all off from all tax-funded services.
I daresay China has just invented a new, shinier way of disenfranchising hobos and the lower classes until they actually just go crawl in a hole and die!
Nicely done, China, you totalitarian hellhole of conformism.
I sort of forced myself to include this after my opening line.
I have almost nothing but reservations about this plan. I am already a staunch advocate against almost all forms of social media. All social media really accomplishes is creating entitled, egotistical users who are rendered almost completely without an attention span or the ability to form thoughts more complex than "I'm hungry," after prolonged exposure.
Of course, that description lines up most closely with Facebook, however I can't imagine that combining all the crackdowns of the Gestapo with the ability to update your status to "held extra-judicially by corrupt Chinese Communists" is going to produce anything other than the worst social media nightmare imaginable.
I wonder what kind of rating Kim Kardashian would get?
Maybe a...D?
PS - Taiwan is Real China, China is a Ruskie Commie Outpost.
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Sources: Google, Wall Street Journal, 1984, Animal Farm
Copyright: Wall Street Journal, China, Tommytoy.Typepad.com, George Orwell, IASIP