Thread by @JimMillward

Interesting Chinese Whispers podcast re PRC *social credit system,* with Jeremy Daum and Vincent Brussee @Vincent_WDB but HUGE gap in their analysis: #Xinjiang version of social credit system IS the Black Mirror @CindyXiaodanYu
spectator.co.uk/podcast/mythbu…

The podcast says so-called social credit system in PRC is not one thing, rather mishmash of local pilots, financial credit rating, Yelp done by the govt, etc. PRC Govt. "not interested" in more dystopian use of broad spectrum monitoring and scoring commentators fixate on

Except the party-state is interested in maximalist use of big data and scoring for social control and punishment, and has done it already:

The Integrated Joint Operations Military Platform for non-Han people in Xinjiang does just that: amasses data on personal behavior, travel, religious belief, contents of phones, relatives' beliefs travel etc., quantifies and crunches to create a single score which ranks people to

determine whether "normal," "abnormal," "dangerous" and literally locks people up extralegally in camps on the basis of the number. Got a bad score? Alarms go off and police are summoned if you go to the mall or leave your neighborhood. Forget about plane tix.

This is the same technology, same process, same companies that in many cases as implementing similar things in Han areas. It's the same CCP system, just less restrained with non-Hans

I've seen this problem in a lot of otherwise good social science re. PRC: analysts ignore Xinjiang and Tibet as if they don't count. It's just like saying infant mortality rates in US are fine, as long as you don't count African Americans.