Resources: Understanding Social Scoring and Its Dystopian Risks

Orginal Article: Social Scoring: The Creeping Threat to Freedom in a Digital Age

 

1.  Strittmatter, K. (2020). We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State. Harper. - This gripping book exposes China’s social credit system, detailing how AI and surveillance control behavior through rewards and punishments like travel bans. It’s a chilling look at state-driven scoring with warnings for the West’s future. It will help upu understand the blueprint of a dystopian surveillance state and its parallels to emerging Western systems.

2.  Chin, J., & Lin, L. (2022). Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. St. Martin’s Press. - Written by two award-winning journalists, this book dives into China’s use of facial recognition and data to enforce social scoring, with insights into how Western tech trends mirror this control. Connects global surveillance trends to the risk of private-sector scoring in the U.S.

3.  Creemers, R. (2018). University of Leiden. “China’s Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control.” (.pdf) - An academic report debunking myths about China’s social credit system while outlining its real mechanisms for monitoring and behavioral control. Offers a neutral and nuanced view of social scoring’s mechanics, essential for understanding its potential Western expansion.

4.  Kobie, N. (2021). “The Complicated Truth About China’s Social Credit System.” Wired. - This article clarifies China’s social credit system, highlighting its fragmented nature and drawing parallels to Western tech platforms’ scoring systems, like social media algorithms. It bridges China’s dystopian reality to emerging U.S. trends, perfect for spotting early warning signs. 

5.  Erlanger, S. (2019). “A Cashless Economy: How to Protect the Low-Income.” Cardozo Law Review. - Explores the privacy and inclusion risks of a cashless economy, linking transaction tracking to potential social control mechanisms like scoring systems. Highlights how a cashless future fuels surveillance, a key driver of dystopian scoring systems.

6.  Pew Research Center (2022). “Share of Americans who go ‘cashless’ in typical week continues to grow.” A 2022 survey showing 41% of Americans use no cash in a typical week, with 82% of transactions cashless in 2022 (Federal Reserve, 2023), signaling a shift to trackable digital payments. This article will help you understand how cashless economies enable the data collection needed for social scoring.

7.  Taibbi, M. (2022). “1. THREAD: The Twitter Files.” Substack. - Matt Taibbi’s exposé of internal Twitter documents reveals U.S. government pressure (e.g., FBI, DHS) on tech platforms to moderate content, hinting at influence over private scoring systems. Uncovers the hidden government hand in tech, a potential driver of dystopian control in the U.S.

 

Orginal Article: Social Scoring: The Creeping Threat to Freedom in a Digital Age