This video is three years old and it looks like Extra Credits was not only ahead of the curve on this story, but, due to their area of expertise, had some very interesting perspectives about the Chinesesocialcreditsystem. The video also has some facinating bits of info regarding the Orwellian nightmare in question that haven't been widely reported.
One of the entities that runs the SCS is Tencent, the company that owns Riot Games, Epic Games and... Blizzard.
Furthermore, it looks like a couple of specific features of the social credit system seem to have been given beta tests in Blizzard's popular MMO, World of Warcraft.
The whole social credit system is the stuff of nightmares, but the fact that western game companies are so heavily involved in the development of this is even more worrying as this has some...implications.
Perhaps Twittermobs are a beta test to explore more social manipulation of a more kinetic nature.
This might sound paranoid. And you might think to yourself "That's retarded!" ...but if you didn't just think that...but you tweeted it, well, then you just got banned.
So who's retarded now?
UPDATE: OK, so you so you just got suspended for a week. These things add up.
Tencent has an undisclosed minority shareholding of Blizzard Activision, which while, yes, you can say they 'own' Blizzard, does not mean they 'owned Blizzard and has access to all the data that Activision-Blizzard has.'
In so far as the Chinese copying mechanics from World of Warcraft - I would not surprised but they hardly need a data dump of everything Blizzard know to do so - Tencent is the owner/operator of much of Blizzard's franchises in the PRC. That includes World of Warcraft - though if the PRC had thought some feature from WoW was useful they would not needed any sort of ownership of Blizzard to copy and implement said feature.
Of all the things to worry about in this discussion - I would rank whatever Blizzard and other Western gaming companies have as being low on the totem pole.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Aug 28 22:23:18 2018 (BcQU4)
2
I only got suspended for a week for using the r-word.
Twice.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 29 03:36:51 2018 (PiXy!)
3
Extra Credit's History series was quite enjoyable. Their history of sci-fi didn't start off too well, telling too much of the story of Frankenstein, but has gotten better as they focused more on the authors. Their relatively new Politics series was.. laughable. On one of the episodes they were basically making a plea for better discourse and treating each other's positions with respect, but all of their examples of good and bad showed their biases. They were naive enough they didn't even realize it nor the irony.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed Aug 29 17:26:01 2018 (06P2d)
4
@cxt217: True, but its still troubling. The idea that WOW was used as a Beta run for a population control program is so outlandish that it's just....
Wait. There's nothing surprising about that at all.
@PixyMisa: I have amended the post.
@StargazerA5: That's the thing about biases....if you're not exposed to heterodox views, it's the easiest thing in the world to not be aware of.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Aug 30 19:02:54 2018 (3bBAK)
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