China, and specifically Shanghai for now, is instituting public credit scores to rank citizens by various factors. The end goal to improve the behavior of people by ranking them publicly. This has to have been in the works for awhile. Did Black Mirror just steal the plot for Nosedive from what China is actually doing?
Quite a few places are reporting it and here’s the NRP version. I read it first in the Economist weeks ago so they should get credit for breaking it really but NPR reminded me. A quote from NPR’s version:
“We want to make Shanghai a global city of excellence,” says Shao Zhiqing, deputy director of Shanghai’s Commission of Economy and Informatization, which oversees the Honest Shanghai app. “Through this app, we hope our residents learn they’ll be rewarded if they’re honest. That will lead to a positive energy in society.”
Shao says Honest Shanghai draws on up to 3,000 items of information collected from nearly 100 government entities to determine an individual’s public credit score.
A good score allows users to collect rewards like discounted airline tickets, and a bad score could one day lead to problems getting loans and getting seats on planes and trains.
One reply on “Black Mirror in real life – Chinese public credit scores”
Scary strange stuff there in Shanghai!