If social credit systems are an upcoming reality in some countries, social media could play an instrumental role in future societies. To understand this statement me must evaluate what a social credit system is and what impact social media currently has on our society.
According to the Wired article titled “The complicated truth about China’s Social Credit Systems” by Nicole Kobie the idea for social credit came up in 2007 and it was implemented in 2014. As of now, there is a difference between the official government system and the unofficial private, corporate versions. A way to break down this system is to see it in our lives. For example, Uber drivers and passengers both rate each other and that impacts the person’s individual score. When your score falls on the lower end, whether it is a correct representation of who you are or not, people will still judge you. China’s social credit system takes that idea and implies it to all aspects of life. The system focuses on people’s behavior and relates it to their trustworthiness. Some examples of this are that if you are caught jaywalking, if you don’t pay your bills, and if you play your music too loud on the train. All of these things affect your score and if your personal score falls too low, you will lose certain rights. If your score falls low enough you can be blacklisted. The article gave an example of what this means through a man named Liu Hu. He is a journalist in China that writes about censorship and government corruption. Because of this, Hu had been arrested, fined, blacklisted, and placed on the list of “Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement by the Supreme People’s Court” [1]. This means that Hu is not qualified to buy a plane ticket, buy a train ticket on certain lines, buy property, or take out a loan. “What’s really scary is there’s nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere,” Hu said [1]. This system is developing and the government is working toward having one official program, yet this is only one piece of the country’s surveillance state. China has developed a facial recognition system that has the power to follow a person across entire cities by using their network of 170 million CCTV cameras. There is a tight control on the internet as well. The government has been cracking down on VPNs, making it harder for people to protect their identities online. The country’s firewall has tight controls on web content and it monitors social media. As stated in the article, “China’s social credit system has been compared to Black Mirror, Big Brother and every other dystopian future sci-fi writers can think up. The reality is more complicated — and in some ways, worse” [1]. In the state of the world at this time, it is clear that social credit systems and social media could be easily intertwined.
This can be connected to the Black Mirror episode titled Nosedive. In this episode, there was a similar concept to social credit but it was controlled by social media. Every time people would walk by each other or see a post online they could give a star score from 1 to 5. This caused the successful world to be superficial and plastic because people are always trying to make others like them. The main character of the episode was named Lacie and she started with a 4.2 rating. Every time she worked out she was glued to her phone sending people stars on social media. The basic plot of the episode was Lacie wanting to get her score up. She was invited to be the maid of honor for a bride that had bullied her and not talked to her in years, but she wanted to go and make a speech because everyone there was going to have high scores. When she got out of the taxi at the airport the driver gave her a low rating. When her flight was canceled and she was upset the attendant and people in line all gave her a low rating. When security had to escort her out of the airport they placed a penalty on her score that dropped it extremely low. Because of this, she could only rent a very old car. When the bride found out how low Lacie’s score had become she did not want her to be the maid of honor anymore. Lacie showed up anyway and she ended up in jail covered in mud in a pink dress screaming profanities at the man in the cell across from her. Despite the dramatic element to this show’s episode, I think that this is a proper reflection of what could happen in a social credit system that is fueled by social media.
According to the journal titled “Becoming-Infrastructure: Datafication, Deactivation and the Social Credit System” by Ramon Salim Diab, “China’s Social Credit System (SCS) will come up with these ratings by linking up personal data held by banks, e-commerce sites and social media. […] how many points are on your driving license: these are just a few of the details that the Chinese government will track – to give scores to all its citizens” [2]. This system is giving the government full control of people’s lives as they strive to achieve a good score. Social media plays a huge part in this as it is a big piece of the way that people communicate and express themselves nowadays. When your social credit score is at stake, that can take the individuality and freedom out of social media.
Works Cited
- Kobie, Nicole. “The Complicated Truth about China’s Social Credit System.” WIRED, WIRED UK, 7 June 2019, http://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained.
- Diab, Ramon Salim. “Becoming-Infrastructure: Datafication, Deactivation and the Social Credit System.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2017, doi:10.24242/jclis.v1i1.19.
Nicole Danigelis 