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Russia launches "social rating" platform to determine a person’s comparative “social status”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/536301

Archived link

The Russia’s State Social University (RSSU) has launched a “social rating” platform that claims to build a person’s “social portrait” with possible applications in future government policies.

Named “We,” the platform promises to determine a user’s comparative “social status” based on a survey that includes questions about income, family status, benefits, creditworthiness, criminal record, lifestyle and state awards, among others.

“The social rating figures don’t affect [a person’s] life, the availability of services or the career trajectory in any way,” RSSU said on the platform’s website. “But who knows what these figures will mean for you in the future?”

Observers on social media compared the platform’s name “We” to the highly influential 1921 dystopian novel of the same name by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. [The novel "We" describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. It inspired British author George Orwell to write his own novel, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", which was published in 1949.]

nikaaa ,

so, Facebook?

Mongostein ,

Oh shit it’s meow meow beans

Spacehooks ,

People keep commenting this. What's the context?

c4lm ,

It's a from a Community episode.

https://community-sitcom.fandom.com/wiki/MeowMeowBeenz

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

Putinism as it is. Oligarchy and survailance.

phoenixz ,

...but who knows...

Yeeaaaahhhhh, about that. We are totally not going the China way, its just that we are because fuck you.

Russia is a maffia state and should be dismantled, prove me wrong.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

We are totally not going the China way

The thing that allows China (and increasingly Russia) to function is the domestic industrialization and steadily rising standard of living that makes these governments popular back home. Their surveillance states exist to gatekeep access to the higher ranks of industrial control and economic authority.

The NATO block has largely divested of its industrial base and focused entirely on industrial imports to sustain the respective economies. Our surveillance state is far more concerned with enforcing a social caste system and propping up an increasingly fragile financial system.

Russia is a maffia state

I've heard it described as a glorified gas station. But that was 20 years ago, when the Russians were pivoting to mirror the Saudi petro states. Now that they've been cut off from the US/UK banking system and the third world cheap labor import network, they've heavily reinvested in aerospace, automotives, and other manufactured goods.

The end result is a Russian economy that is outpacing all other "advanced economies" according to the IMF, with the fastest industrial growth its enjoyed in 18 years.

They're not just a bunch of aging mafiosos shaking down local businesses for spare change. They're a trillion dollar economy with vast mineral wealth, enormous capital stocks, and a highly educated labor force. And they're reasserting themselves in a way they haven't done since glasnost and the end of the USSR.

Alborlin ,

Are you joking or are you a shill? All of Western world has multiple protections and amenities in place firmly yet.
If you talkn about economy, where is the money? I mean we would not have stories about soldiers being asked to use tampons, dealing with North Korea out of all countries.
Are you sure you are talking about v same russia we are seeing in 2024?

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

I linked directly to the IMF Report. Is the International Monetary Fund a shill for the Russian government, too?

phoenixz ,

China is about to dive into a shitshow of unseen proportions thanks to its 1 child policy in the past. The Chinese populace is set to shrink to 800 million in the next 50 or so years which will cause a shitload of economical problems for China. It's the single biggest reason why China is prepping to invade Taiwan now because it's either now or never, as in a decade from now it won't be able to financially support said invasion. China could grow like crazy because of its cheap labour but those times are gone. Wages rose, wealth rose, and the advantages they had are gone. Now they will face a rapidly aging work force with way WAY too little people to replace the retirees that need taking care of.

Russia is fucked. If they win the Ukraine Invasion, they are fucked, if they lose it, they are fucked. If they win, they'll get an utterly destroyed country that needs some half trillion dollars of investment to be able to repair itself. Take with that that the Ukrainian people hated eachother before the war, yet now are more United than ever. Russia will face terrorism from there for a long time to come. If they lose, the world will keep blocking them until they pay said billions for Ukrainian repairs, and it will cost Putin his head.

Meanwhile they had a huge outflux of knowledge and experience with loads of capable men fleeing the country to escape roundups to be sent to the front lines. They are currently running a war time economy which keeps them afloat until this war is over, then shit will start hitting fans everywhere.

My take: China will slowly fade to a medium player over the next decades, Russia is on the brink of a heavy collapse. India is a big contender of being the next evil empire with its current leadership being a bunch of extremists.

It would be nice if people toxoukd stop with the imerialistic bullshit and just start caring about all the people in the world. Listen to scientists, elect government officials that are actually responsible. Don't go for crazy growth, it will come back to bite you in the ass.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

China is about to dive into a shitshow of unseen proportions

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ef7ee5d9-c935-4560-bb20-2b69c7bdccc5.png

phoenixz ,

Ooohhh you must be one of those tankies i keep hearing about...

Lets not read the comment, lets just post a meme..? Great argument.

None of what I said is particularly controversial, the Chinese population distribution is a shitshow in the making. But lets post a meme.

You know what, good boy, you get an extra social point !

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Ooohhh you must be one of those tankies i keep hearing about…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/abc04d6a-ed47-4605-a345-83f825569da8.jpeg

the Chinese population distribution is a shitshow in the making

A thing people have been repeating for centuries.

phoenixz ,

How about: no.

Also how about: even China admits is a shit show, and they're desperately trying to fix the issue by not only loosening the baby laws, they are actively pushing people to have babies and for some "unknown" reason they don't wanna.

Seriously, all toundo is post dumb memes and slogans.

Are you 14 or something? I thought I was talking to an adult but I seem to have been mistaken

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

even China admits is a shit show

Go ahead. Lets see your work. Are you referring to a specific statement or is this bluster?

they’re desperately trying to fix the issue by not only loosening the baby laws, they are actively pushing people to have babies

They've been ratcheting and loosening their One Child Policy (now closer to a 2.3 Child Policy) for half a century. But then so has every other country with a functioning census bureau.

all toundo is post dumb memes and slogans

Westerners were outright panicked about "Overpopulation" for half my adult life. Then the 2008 financial crash happened and someone noticed a change in the second derivative of population trends. And now we get an article a week about how we'll be entirely babyless inside the next generation.

Are you 14 or something?

That would make me, what? Three years your senior? Show some respect.

FiniteBanjo ,

Omg, the RSSU, lmao. How is this not the Onion?

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

What's wrong with RSS-- Oh. Well, Putinism is opposite of communism.

FiniteBanjo ,

One could argue that the USSR as a dictatorship is not much different than modern Russia as a dictatorship, and that claims of communism contradict the reality of the Stalin era, but there are certainly a lot of nuance that I'm avoiding with such a statement.

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

One could argue that the USSR as a dictatorship is not much different than modern Russia as a dictatorship

Totalitarian and autoritarian dictatorships work differently. USSR promised better future and mostly delivered with occasional purges during Stalin era, while Putinism promises stagnation at best. First was ultrareformist, while second is ultraconservative, even regressional. First collapsed from stagnation of 80-ies, second is still going.

and that claims of communism contradict the reality of the Stalin era

Indeed, Stalin era is opposite of being soviet(parlamentary) and socialist.

dumblederp , (edited )
@dumblederp@aussie.zone avatar

We've already got personal wealth as a social credit system pretty much everywhere.

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

Best explaination of why Putinism as bad as capitalism.

Gsus4 , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

Named “We,” the platform promises to determine a user’s comparative “social status” based on a survey that includes questions about income, family status, benefits, creditworthiness, criminal record, lifestyle and state awards, among others.

Criminal record: putin's scoreboard of excellency https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3174724/russias-putin-decorates-army-unit-accused-ukraine-war-crimes

How many putinpoints do they get for using a 3 to 13million$ Kh-101 cruise missile to bomb a children's hospital chemo ward?

eldavi ,

approximately the same thing an idf soldier gets for doing the same thing.

Gsus4 , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

they have social credit scores in Israel too? Is is netanyahupoints or just putinpoints as well?
(better have a universal currency for war crimes, including building military headquarters under hospitals with stolen aid like hamas)

zerog_bandit ,

Are you saying that Ukrainians are the same as Hamas?

phoenixz ,

Nah, probably just that idf and the Russian army are both filled with ear criminals.

Natanael ,

Ear criminals? Are their covers that bad?

phoenixz ,

War... Not ear :)

Gsus4 , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

But why do you need to go fetch Israel as the ultimate measure that you need to understand the egregiousness of what russia is doing to Ukraine...when what russia is doing to Ukraine is both the crimes of Israel and hamas combined:

the crime of Israel's brutality without regard for human life

and

the crime of hamas's terroristic persistent attempt to destroy their neighbour at the expense of its own people

...there is no comparison here.

phoenixz ,

The comparison is that they both have large amounts of war criminals. You can compare sections of subjects, you know.

Gsus4 , (edited )
@Gsus4@programming.dev avatar

If you're going to do that, you may as well just jump to american war crimes e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_hospital_airstrike or hamas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_war_crimes I'm just pointing out that with russia it clear to see that there is an aggressor and a victim. When you throw in Israel-hamas in the conversation, you muddy the waters by comparing it with a 76-year-old war with brutality and a lot of bad decisions on both sides that has turned the leadership on one side into morally-bankrupt fanatics and the leadership on the other side into genocidal fascists.

Israel has neighbours telling them they should disappear every day and those neighbours will not settle for anything less, even after palestinian statehood on the table multiple times, how do you resist that?

On the other hand, nobody wants to make russia disappear, yet russia acts as desperate to destroy Ukraine, a sovereign nation as if they had been the ones invaded. It is much more despicable than hamas and israel.

aceshigh ,
@aceshigh@lemmy.world avatar

What about personality? You know the thing that actually matters in a person…

ChairmanMeow ,
@ChairmanMeow@programming.dev avatar

I'd say bombing children's hospitals says a lot about someone's personality.

aceshigh ,
@aceshigh@lemmy.world avatar

Ok. That’s not the majority of the population.

TheDeepState ,

Is it called Facebook?

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

Twitter*

*banned in Russia organization

ChaoticEntropy ,
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

“The social rating figures don’t affect [a person’s] life, the availability of services or the career trajectory in any way,” RSSU said on the platform’s website. “But who knows what these figures will mean for you in the future?”

Well that's a relief...

RememberTheApollo_ ,

When was the last time an entity that generated stats about someone didn’t end up with those stats being used to the detriment of the individual - or at the very least for the profit of another?

Blackmist ,

There was me thinking it could be used for something sinister.

Kusimulkku ,

“But who knows what these figures will mean for you in the future?”

Well that's not ominous at all

Deway ,

I give this news 5 MeowMeowBeenz.

Hildegarde ,

Russia now has a social credit system just like china and also the united states

tudor , (edited )

You see, in the States, your credit score is an indication of how likely you are to be responsible and comply with the terms of a loan or other bank-related contract. If you have a low score, you don’t get a loan, because the bank sees you as a risk that you will not give their money back. You can still live your life normally, even with a low score, and possibly even rebuild your score over time. Only what you do with money influences your credit score.

In China, the social credit score is an indication of how loyal you are to the regime. A low social credit score, which is earned by disrespecting the regime or not following the silliest of laws, forbids you from using public transport, buying stuff, or getting education.

You can’t miss that contrast.

RecluseRamble ,

Every banking system has some kind of credit score. Social scoring is what's relatively new and has to keep us on edge because also governments of mostly free societies have a natural interest in such systems.

verity_kindle ,
@verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works avatar

Indeed, thank you for some lucidity.

DRStamm ,

While you're right that there's a vast difference between a credit score and a social credit score, I would argue that the US credit score system does have a bigger impact on one's life than just not being able to get a loan. It is used to deny housing and employment and makes purchases more expensive due to higher payback rates. Since so much of our economy is built on consumer spending without the needed growth in wages over the last fifty or so years, some kind of personal debt is needed especially for people with low incomes who have to cover essentials one way or the other. It creates a self-reinforcing spiral that keeps poor people poor.

Things have improved here and there with the CFPB and some anti-discrimination ordinances at the local level, but it's hardly enough to narrow the effect as you described. Heck, it took us until the Biden administration to propose to ban medical debt from affecting credit scores.

In both cases, these scoring systems are part of a suite of incentives to get people to play by the rules of the power structures that exist: social credit for national authoritarians hierarchies and TransEquiSperiFax for the authority of capitalist hierarchies.

Again, you're not completely wrong and I don't want to claim that one system is anywhere close to being as pernicious as the other, but the US system not quite so harmless as you say. Sorry for making this so US-centric but that's where I have the most perspective.

Dkarma ,

And yet you still try to conflate the two... interesting.

tudor ,

Thanks for sharing your insight!

Freefall ,

Let's see how the Make Russia China campaign goes!

Scolding7300 ,

I see the North Korea visit was pretty useful

TheBigBrother ,

Don't feed the rusophobe Lemmy echo chamber!!

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

Make an instance that federates both with mainstream Lemmy and Lemmygrad if you want both sides - and trust me, you don't.

USNWoodwork ,

So am I to take it from your inference that the Russian Lemmy site is called Lemmygrad?

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

Do your own research if you really want to verify that claim but bring a hazmat suit.

verity_kindle ,
@verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works avatar

You know what an inference is and seem curious about the world...that will not play well in Lemmygrad. Good luck and Godspeed, tho.

Omniraptor , (edited )

it's just called that, it's not meaningfully Russian. But also people exaggerate, it's not as bad as all that- my instance lemm.ee federates with both and I haven't run into too many issues.

uebquauntbez ,

New feature is ... Putin has 0 points and is the goal to go to?

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