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By 2021, the Chinese government hopes to have a social rating system in place for each of its 1.3 billion citizens. Although that may seem like an opening line for an episode of Black Mirror, it’s not. This is really happening.

According to Bloomberg,

The tracking of individual behavior in China has become easier as economic life moves online, with apps such as Tencent’s WeChat and Ant Financial’s Alipay a central node for making payments, getting loans and organizing transport. Accounts are generally linked to mobile phone numbers, which in turn require government IDs.

The technical panopticon has the power to ruin citizens’ lives in various ways. If you have a poor score, you can be prevented from buying plane or train tickets, the government can throttle your internet, you or your kids won’t be able to go to the best schools or get the best jobs, you won’t be able to reserve rooms at the best hotels, and you will be publicly listed a a bad citizens. Oh, yeah, and if you have a dog it will be taken away.

Not to be a paranoid fear monger, but it doesn’t take an (soft) authoritarian government like China’s to implement a program like this. These kinds of systems can also emerge organically, and the more social media we commit to, the more likely we are create that system ourselves.

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