I've been frustrated lately that my rating as a passenger in Uber is at 4.78 and falling despite my own preception of always being an excellent passenger. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have your entire life controlled by this type of rating system. I listened to a podcast that dug into how once you get into a hole with this type of rating system it's self-reinforcing and practically impossible to get out of. This can't be a good thing for civil liberties.
frustrated lately that my rating as a
passenger in Uber is at 4.78 and falling
Mother of God, passenger ratings? I'm glad I've never used Uber, and now I am certain I never will.
I mean, of all things, I don't even like the HN karma system. Arbitrary frowny faces for The Wrong Kind of Joke only now, scale that up first, just to taxi drivers, and then apply it to Society At Large, All Day Every Day.
Uber/Taxi drivers are people too, and their vehicles are an important part of their livelihood. They deserve the right to avoid the types of people who end up with 1 star reviews on Uber. Hint: you have the vomit in, steal from, or otherwise wreak havoc MORE THAN ONCE for it to get that bad.
Suppose I go through a tough patch in my life - perhaps a stressful period combined with a serious medical problem - and during this time I vomit in several Ubers, driving my customer rating to < 3.
Is it possible to fix this? Am I going to have to change my name, email, and phone number before I can use Uber again? And how is this AT ALL better than the old taxi system, where the taxi company owned the car and was able to insure itself against this kind of damage caused by passengers? Not to mention that if Uber is successful, it's likely to become the only game in town - whereas taxi services are quite diverse by comparison.
Also, why do you assume that I have to be a "bad person" to get a bad rating? What if I'm a minority living in an area where my background is looked upon with suspicion or hatred?
I drove for Lyft one summer and someone who had just gotten into a serious motorcycle accident called me to take them to the ER. They bled all over my back seat, not to mention terrifying me because I have absolutely no training as a first responder. If you need to urgently go to the hospital, call a fucking ambulance, not an Uber!
Does that change the fact that the driver has to clean your virulent vomit? You might come away with a 5 star rating if you apologize and paid for the cleaning, or if the driver felt sorry for you.
It is just that there is a difference between deliberate or avoidable bad behavior and situations where one cannot help themselves and need the transport system for emergency rescue.
It is crazy the latter could land you on a blacklist. A rating system is not necessary. A reporting system for the rotten apples would suffice, and the rest of the customers would be unrated.
The guy brought to hospital may end up in coma. Not able to clean up.
With reporting you cannot have a pissed-off driver land a pregnant women on a blacklist because she delivered her child in the car, and there is now blood on the seats.
There is some occupational hazard for taxi drivers and others in public transport. The provider company or insurance should cover cleanup costs.
But the government is made up of people. If I recall, there are something like 90 million members in the CCP. And really, any Chinese citizen can join and move up the ranks.
So we're pretending Xi is not a dictator now? Did we forget how he arrested all of his real opponents and critics before re-election? You make it sound like China is almost a democracy which couldn't be farther from the truth.
It is not all that transparent. At a certain point you will end up on one or more blacklists, and there is no clear way to get off it again, or even arbitrage this act.
Then the rules system is very complex, and probably will be ever changing, being fine-tuned. There are rules in preparation (or already implemented) where your network of friends and relatives affect your credit score, etc. Very dystopic social engineering.
It will be harder and harder to check whether all rules are applied equally across all people, I imagine.
There are also many mentions of your friends network affecting your score, like in this Wired article from 2017:
> Zhima Credit’s algorithm considers not only whether you repay your bills but also what you buy, what degrees you hold, and the scores of your friends.
> Zhima Credit’s algorithm considers not only whether you repay your bills but also what you buy, what degrees you hold, and the scores of your friends.
I think you misunderstood what this means. It means when taking loans, the algorithm takes into account your score as well as your friends. This assertion in itself I must say I didn't find from any other sources.
This, even if proven to true, is completely different from what you are suggesting (i.e. your friend's score affecting your score).
Also, this Zhima Credit is just a private owned, part of the system which focuses on financial well being of individuals, it's not linked to other component of the system. Other social score components might not have this network effect.
> But that is not the half of it. Scores will also be awarded to citizens according to who they associate with. If your social media connections consist exclusively of senior government officials and respectable party ideologues, the chances are the presiding algorithm will allot you the equivalent of a triple-A rating. But if you happen to have exchanged messages with someone who is friends with a human rights lawyer or the imam at the local mosque, you could rapidly find your status cut to junk.
I was looking for another article that explains it in more detail still, but cannot find it. But have seen this described in many places. I haven't been to China, and can't tell how far they are in their implementation. Just going from news sources.
2. The author seems to reference the official document from the government. I did an extensive review of official document on social credit system (link in my profile), and didn't find anything describing such thing.
Maybe it is just a feature of the Zhima Credit (a private financial credit system), which happens to be included social credit system.
Thanks. I sure hope you are right and it will not (and never) end up in the official system, and that all the articles mentioning it are just speculating or sensationalising their story.
To me, as a lay man reading about all that is planned already, it does not seem all that far-fetched to see this being implemented soon. But as you rightfully say: it's the facts that count.
Transparency will also make it very easy to abide by some, though. Like imagine if Google's ranking algorithm was public. SEO spammers would greatly profit from that but overall the system would suffer due to their over-optimization for some things.
