[microsage]

This is completely unfounded speculation not found in that article or in any other writing on the topic(s) (of social credit scores and the study the great nation app). Or possibly it's an attempt at some dark humor through hyperbole. Either way, I see a lot of these sort of extreme claims on HN whenever China comes up, and I think we'd all do better to discuss what's actually happening rather than our wildest fears. This type of speculation really muddies the waters and makes it hard to have a thoughtful discussion about anything China-related on here, and China is a big, complicated, important topic right now that deserves careful consideration. It also risks undermining legitimate criticisms of Chinese policy, or at least making them less believable, which I assume is the exact opposite of the intent of the poster here.

[EGreg]

Consider that already, purchases for mobility and communication are restricted based on social credit scores:

Cellphones

https://www.sfgate.com/business/amp/China-requires-ID-to-buy...

Trains

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g297411-i3650-k1024500...

There are official confirmations

http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2019/02/22/china-social-credi...

They also officially admit they can:

Throttle your internet speed

Ban your kids from some schools

Banning you from certain jobs

Taking your pets away

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-pu...

I think that predicting possible restricting ability to buy food is not “unfounded speculation” but rather pointing out something that can literally be one step away. If you help someone with a low social credit score who has been restricted, your score also lowers. The AI can track where you’ve been and who you helped. Uyghur markets are gone. Their freedom of movement has been restricted as they are in the re-education centers for years.

Are you really taking issue with the suggestion that food can be next, how much hyperbole is it given the scale of what happened in 2018 and 2019 thus far alone?

[microsage]

I don't want to have a big debate over what will and what won't happen in China in the future as I see you and I are working from very different assumptions and have very different approaches for extrapolating into the future. I'm just taking issue with the form of your previous comment, which took your personal fear of a Chinese policy that has not been suggested by the Chinese government, any China scholars, or even the most fearmongering clickbait hungry US reporter, and stated it as fact like so:

"Extreme claim not based in fact, stated as fact"

[link, implied to support the claim but doesn't]

When you do this, some percentage of people are going to take what you're saying at face value and believe that this is actual policy, especially since you seem to have provided a source (even though clicking on that source reveals it to be a paper thin cnet article that provides no support for what you're saying).

Frustratingly, you're doing it again here - you say "purchases for mobility and communication are restricted by social credit scores", and then you provide two links - one for cellphones and one for trains - that just say you need to use IDs to sign up for mobile plans and to buy train tickets in China, describing policies that existed long prior to social credit scores and have nothing to do with social credit scores. Those are also policies that exist in a lot of other countries, the first link you provide even says this in the first sentence:

"...joining many European and Asian countries in curbing the anonymous use of mobile technology."

Also, at least in my personal experience, you need an ID to buy a train ticket in the US as well. Also your source for that is a comment in a trip advisor thread about needing an ID to buy bus tickets, not train tickets, and consists entirely of people speculating and things they've heard second hand - a truly horrible source if ever I've seen one, and not in support of what you're saying even if it was a good source.

Without going through it, as I think it's pretty clear at this point that you're being very sloppy with your sources, that business insider article doesn't say what you're saying it says either.

Even looking past the many false claims here completely unsupported by the links you're providing, you can't just list a few things you don't like that seem "unfree" to you and then say you think that predicting keeping people that don't use an app regularly enough from buying food is a reasonable prediction. Or rather, go ahead and say it if you want but please just make it clear that it's your prediction rather than a fact like you did above, and be careful that the links you provide as supporting sources actually relate to what you're saying.

And please, please, please, be careful with how you summarize linked content - the way you do it here and appear to be doing it in your previous post is so inaccurate and so mixed with your own predictions and fears that I'm giving you a lot of benefit of the doubt by saying it's "sloppy" rather than "intentionally deceptive".

[EGreg]

Well of course it’s my prediction, and a flippant one also, but one that’s designed to draw attention to the problem, the same way that 1984 was designed to draw attention to certain policies.

We’re talking about a country that has extrajudicial detention facilities to detain for years and re-educate huge numbers of people who committed no crime, based not on due process but on their religion alone, including Falun Gong and Uyghurs and probably some underground Churches and Buddhists. They probably already have the food-based control I’m talking about. I mean, the trajectory and overton window is REALLY worrying. What I said is coming to be within that window.