Social Media Fueled Fascism

In regards to China, people need to forget the word "Communism" entirely, it does not exist there in any form. The Chinese might use the terminology, the symbols and rhetoric, but the system itself is something very very far removed, in-fact it approaches something on the entirely opposite end of the political philosophy spectrum.

Big Business + Government ==

In the Summer of 2014, the Chinese government called for the creation of a "social credit system" and green-lit some of Chinese largest corporate players to achieve this.

It was not too long after this began to coalesce Facebook was discovered to be providing exceptional backend access to financial services companies, some of whom were building credit profiles of Facebook users, based on the content of their posts. As described in this very good article from The Nation in May of 2015 .

.. a 2011 presentation by FICO and Equifax’s IXI Services was titled “Enhancing Your Marketing Effectiveness and Decisions With Non-Regulated Data” ..

This Non-Regulated Data is, in part, your social media presence. Those posts of you blowing up a phatty, or describing how broke you are, if the plan was brought to fruition your credit score would be impacted. Undoubtedly this kind of profiling, or "consumer evaluation", continues, just not with Facebook.com's overt participation. The Financial Times in August of 2016, upped an article entitled "How Facebook can affect your credit score".

Well this was shocking to many people in North America .. meanwhile back in China ...

Seasame Credit is born!

Initial realization of the Chinese government's directive ..

The "score" however, is not based on 'credit-worthiness' alone, it is about the broader ideas of being a "responsible citizen" in the eyes of the government and their corporate partners. The score is based on such things as one's political expression, foreign media consumption and product purchases, general behavior, and most troubling, your score is very much impacted by the people you associate with - if a connection can be made to someone who is deemed not be a model citizen, your score goes down.

The kids however are not fooled, they understand what this "initiative" is, in-fact no one is trying to hide what it is - or the fact that full participation in the system, by all citizens, will be mandatory by 2020. When there is no way to 'opt-out' of something, there are only a few ways to confront it .. non-violent non-participation on a large and wide-scale, rendering it ineffective, to violently rebel against its existence which would mean a direct conflict with the state, not something that will happen .. again .. given the economic gains and 'other freedoms' the population has enjoyed.

The third option, which will undoubtedly be the case, is the most frightening .. compliance and maximization of the benefits of full-participation. The population will shape their lives in such a way as to gain the highest scores possible, so that they can reap the greatest benefits. They will in-fact 'game themselves' and the state, knowing that the Chinese people are already culturally pre-disposed to decision-making that provides them the greatest material benefit, fully expect this.

STEEM & STEEMIT exists to challenge this abuse of technology, this kind of corporate / state manipulation of individuals and society itself. If any of us does anything that is antithesis to all that Sesame Credit stands for, we know we are on the right path.