China launches an app that tells you if you are within 500 yards of someone in debt - and encourages you to report them if they seem capable of paying

[bromou]

5 minutes ago, mxk. said:

老实说，习近平很可怕。

Yes

[DrMacintosh]

9 minutes ago, kilgore_T said:

the anti china sentiment in this place is unsettling

Kinda difficult to be sentimental towards a country who has a completely different ideology than the West. 

[XR6]

23 minutes ago, kilgore_T said:

the entirety of China created this app did they?

I'm not trying to sound rude but it's pretty self explanatory that nearly 1.4 billion people didn't make this app.. 

24 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I don’t respect the Chinese Government 

In some regards I'd have to agree with you. The Chinese Government doesn't really respect its own citizens so why should I respect them? First internet censorship now this. Privacy just isn't a thing over there.

[Salv8 (sam)]

right thats it i am never going to china...

[bromou]

19 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

等待那些真正来自中国的人。自从P106改装材料开始出现以来，我们已经有了一些

I am from China, although China is not perfect, but I love it.

[restless]

What if you're wrongly accused of having an open debt and you can't get to work because public transport is blocked now? Welcome to the rabbit hole.

[kilgore_T]

12 minutes ago, 1kv said:

I'm not trying to sound rude but it's pretty self explanatory that nearly 1.4 billion people didn't make this app.. 

 

 "province of Hebei created the app"

 

[bromou]

1 minute ago, restless said:

如果你被错误地指责有公开的债务并且因为公共交通现在被阻止而无法上班，该怎么办？欢迎来到兔洞。

You can take a short trip through the bus.

[restless]

3 minutes ago, bromou said:

You can take a short trip through the bus.

Alright. However, my point is that one needs to be extremely cautious with such a technology and I wouldn't trust anybody once they want to introduce this on a bigger scale. Neither a government nor an AI.

As the OP mentioned, it reminds me of the black mirror episode nosedive.

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, ZacoAttaco said:

It's embedded in WeChat which must be a very popular app in China, also iOS has a relatively small marketshare in China because of how expensive they are and the wide array of local Chinese phones available. But you're correct, Apple would never allow this type of monitoring on their devices, unless the US Government wanted them to implement a similar feature.

considering how Apple has bent to China's request in order to be able to sell their devices there, I doubt they would go against this if the Chinese government requested it.

 

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-apple-china-20160226-story.html

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/apple-removes-gambling-apps-in-china-after-pressure-from-state-run-media/

https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/293723/apple-shifts-icloud-data-to-china-complies-with-country-law

[bromou]

23 minutes ago, restless said:

Alright. However, my point is that one needs to be extremely cautious with such a technology and I wouldn't trust anybody once they want to introduce this on a bigger scale. Neither a government nor an AI.

As the OP mentioned, it reminds me of the black mirror episode nosedive.

I agree with you

[Teddy07]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

Kinda difficult to be sentimental towards a country who has a completely different ideology than the West. 

I have to disagree because I like China, Russia and Turkey. This includes their leaders. I even bought some clothes to show my support. Some people didn´t like it and had to start an argument.

 

 

Just don´t swallow the mainstream media propaganda. Sure, I am in the minority because there are many drones which believe anything the media or the government tells them.

[mr moose]

I bet any of the western world governments could easily match this just using facebooks system.  They know who is in debt already, they just track them through facebook and alert anyone they want.

[TechyBen]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I bet any of the western world governments could easily match this just using facebooks system.  They know who is in debt already, they just track them through facebook and alert anyone they want.

I would not put it past very soon a "mob mentality" style incentive to a lot of things. People are getting scared of their own shadows, and legit real world problems, and those in charge are panicking on how to make things change. So this kind of "incentive" could be a real scary thing (We know it exists to some extent already in a community setting, people point fingers, get others beat up/locked up).

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

I would not put it past very soon a "mob mentality" style incentive to a lot of things. People are getting scared of their own shadows, and legit real world problems, and those in charge are panicking on how to make things change. So this kind of "incentive" could be a real scary thing (We know it exists to some extent already in a community setting, people point fingers, get others beat up/locked up).

There is some ease to your concerns, while corruption may or may not be getting worse, violent crime and criminal activity in general is shrinking across the first world. which means we more less only have to concern ourselves with more seedy side of society and the dangers the internet brings in that regard.

 

[TechyBen]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

There is some ease to your concerns, while corruption may or may not be getting worse, violent crime and criminal activity in general is shrinking across the first world. which means we more less only have to concern ourselves with more seedy side of society and the dangers the internet brings in that regard.

 

There is nothing to ease my concerns. I know of people this second, being abused by systems like this. Being put in prison, beat up, having their homes burnt down. I know they will go through it for some time, then later it will stop. However, it may also happen here (the west) sooner rather than later.

[Thaldor]

1 hour ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

How is this practical to implement?

People with debts will never install it, cant force android users too.

only adding this spyware in next ios is possible

The thing is China is a very different place. I could bet on that every big Chinese company has at least their CEO with the red book. Huawei already has locked OS in their phones (for older models they don't give bootloader keys and for newer after a update the whole thing has gone away) and I could bet that at least some other Chinese phone companies follow the suit. After locking the OS it's quite trivial to lock in some apps like WeChat and make them so that they are always on. Combine that with the Great Firewall and you get a situation where everyone needs to use one single app for messaging, another for social media and so on and even if you can circumvent the great firewall with VPN it doesn't really change a thing because still majority of the people can't do it or won't do it (not to even mention that when the OS is locked and very probably following every app the user installs legal sources or sideloading, I can bet that it's going to be a big hit in users "social score" to sideload a VPN app and then sideload something like Whatsapp or Messenger to use with VPN).

Secondly there's the social pressure. If you don't use the app and have good social score, it's going to show in everywhere. Also in 2020 it becomes mandatory, so not having it means fines or prison.

 

Saddest thing in this is that other countries can't even pressure China to change their minds because almost every country is very debendable on China and if China was to close their borders or put export limitations it would get very nasty very quickly.

[laminutederire]

3 hours ago, ZacoAttaco said:

It's embedded in WeChat which must be a very popular app in China, also iOS has a relatively small marketshare in China because of how expensive they are and the wide array of local Chinese phones available. But you're correct, Apple would never allow this type of monitoring on their devices, unless the US Government wanted them to implement a similar feature.

It's not that wechat is popular, it's that almost everyone has it. It's how people communicate, how they start to mostly pay as well. It's tied to basically most things anyway.

[Fasauceome]

So they can track if you're avoiding paying debts but can't make you pay the debts? Kind of back asswards if you ask me

[sof006]

Wtf this is wrong on so many different levels it's not even funny.

 

My immediate reaction when I read the title was "What?!"

[CTR640]

Renminbi!!!!!!

 

[Jito463]

11 hours ago, Arika S said:

State-run newspaper China Daily reported that officials in the Chinese province of Hebei created the app, named 'map of deadbeat debtors', which can be accessed through social media app WeChat. 

The app alerts users with a flash when they are within 500 meters of someone who is in debt - the newspaper claimed.

6 hours ago, kilgore_T said:

the entirety of China created this app did they?

 

the anti china sentiment in this place is unsettling

No one is saying that "the entirety of China created this app".  People are just using "China" as a catch-all reference to the government.  Imprecise, yes, but understandable.  You need to lighten up.

[S w a t s o n]

6 hours ago, kilgore_T said:

 "province of Hebei created the app"

Yea except that the chinese government is the chinese government. Just because a locality was the one to make it doesnt mean it wont see widespread use with the federal social credit system. Make no mistake that anti-china rhetoric is more or less anti-chinese  "communist" government. You know the one with a single party and where people take family members away in the night for social media posts.

[Velcade]

The whole social credit system is strange.  Good luck China.

[sushrutgokhale]

12 hours ago, SlimyPython said:

Ouch... Imagine google was a country... oh wait

ITS BEEN HERE ALL ALONG

and to think its the country where Google doesn't exist