Perhaps you have heard about China’s social credit system in recent days. It is a rating system that is based on one behaviors, bill payments, debts, and related data. I know, it sounds horrible? You might remember the “Nosedive” episode in the 3rd season of Black Mirror. It was about a social system, and people could rate each other for their social reputation.
Today, China is in the early stages of creating a social credit, but according to reports it will be valid for all Chinese citizens by 2020. This Chinese example shows how social media could leads to a dystopia, which is already criticized a lot for its lack of freedom and data protection. However, nowadays this rating system is available in the rest of the world as well. We are all living in an ecosystem where we all are just synthesized into points of data. Shoshana Zuboff calls it surveillance capitalism. Companies like Google and Facebook are using our data in the framework of big data. Also, when they are designing their systems, they are using behavioral algorithms to change user behaviors. Shoshana Zuboff quotes one of the Chief Data Scientists of a much-admired Silicon Valley company:
“The goal of everything we do is to change people’s actual behavior…
