[ddiq]

If you think this story is limited to, or even about, political correctness, you are mistaken. It could be your insurance rates going up for jaywalking, even with no cars around. It could be your credit score dropping if you have too many drinks at a bar. It's about your personal activities all being tracked, measured, and in the end, controlled by corporations.

[rapnie]

I don't know why you are downvoted. Think the dangers are real with social credit systems on the rise. Much has been written on them, e.g.

> The social credit system is used to punish citizens for bad behavior with numerous blacklists preventing them from traveling, getting loans or jobs, or staying in hotels, and even by limiting internet access.

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-b...

Maybe people find it hard to believe these will be implemented in western countries?

[rauhl]

> I don't know why you are downvoted.

I don’t agree with the downvoters at all, but I think it’s fairly obvious why he’s being downvoted: either folks think he’s wrong that such a thing is possible, or folks think he’s right but don’t care (i.e., they think that the society he describes is desirable, or at worst neutral).

I don’t think that his described society is impossible, and indeed we already see a slow, less-regimented version of that playing out.

I cannot emotionally understand someone who would find such a society desirable, but intellectually it kind of makes sense: one needs to be just authoritarian enough to want to control non-violent behaviour, while just naïve enough not to realise that there are aspects of one’s own behaviour which would be controlled, too (i.e., every one of us disagrees with the majority on at least one or two items).

[squiggleblaz]

It's shocking to me that here, on Hacker News, posts like these get voted down. I could understand them being regarded as unpopular on mainstream media, but HN? Wow.

[ddiq2]

It already is implemented in America. Political dissidents are harassed by airport security, get their bank accounts closed and credit cards canceled, are banned from services like AirBNB, and get railroaded in the courts.

[hirako2000]

Source?

[ddiq]

Chase Bank shuts down prominent conservatives https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/chase-bank-conservati...

AirBnB seeks out and blocks people going to the American Renaissance conference https://gizmodo.com/airbnb-doesnt-want-extremists-on-its-pla...

Credit cards cancel payments to "hate" groups https://nypost.com/2017/08/16/credit-cards-are-clamping-down...

These are all political censorship against people or groups that aren't doing anything illegal, and the standards are applied differently based on ideology rather than any objective standard.

[hirako2000]

Thanks, although it's the security checks at the border based on traced political views isn't sourced, I found some.

That's the one that bothers me, as there is hardly ant competition possible in the security checks business.

Airbnb, banks.. all it takes is some open minded provider to make those political police institution to loose ground. Although its matter a time before open minded providers also get pressured to police their customers.

[ddiq]

I see what you're saying, but it's just a bit naive. It's not that easy to create a new provider to help political dissidents. A number of web services have been started to do so, and forced to shut down by being cut off by upstream providers. "Just make your own ..." at some point isn't viable, because other companies at every level are making sure you don't succeed.

[Nasrudith]

"American Renaissance" - actual fucking nazis. If first we came for the nazis the poem would have but one line.

[ddiq]

It's ok to go after the free speech of political dissidents if you slander them with generic insults first?

[chillwaves]

Maybe you should have used one of those examples instead.

[ddiq]

Doesn't seem to matter, since that comment is getting downvoted as well.

I guess technologists don't want to see the future they're creating, and would rather just come up with tactics that barely defend against the surveillance we have now.

[hirako2000]

Technologists are for hire. They get paid. They need to get paid for something. They do see the future it's creating, some of them build tools (for free) to counter what they or they peers are building.