Life on the wrong side of China's social credit system - <AUTHOR> https://www.inkstonenews.com/china/chinas-13-million-discredited-individuals-face-discrimination-thanks-social-credit-system/article/3003319 <comment><USER2> USA is heading down this road, too. 21 states will suspend your driver's license if you fall behind on student debt. This is ass backwards and destructive thinking. I am certain this is just the start of greater restrictions on the unfortunate.

<comment><USER3> As I've been reminded countless times, "driving is a privilege not a right". You can lose your license for all kinds of 'unfair' reasons that do not make sense, and I agree it's heavy handed to include student loan debt, but until it is Federally acknowledged that all citizens have a right to drive (after passing proper license tests), then this downward progression will continue.

In California you can't even register your vehicle if you're behind on your child support payments. (I need my job to make payments. I can't get to my job without my car.)

<comment><USER4> Sure, but none of that changes the fact that suspending someone's driving privilege as a _punishment_ for _failing to pay a debt_ is incredibly stupid and counterproductive.

<comment><USER5> I was once sitting in a courtroom for something unrelated and saw a 19 year old kid go to jail for 3 months for not paying child support. Not sure how he's going to pay it back in there, but if all you have is a hammer...

<comment><USER6> Was he really sent to jail for not paying child support, or was it actually for contempt of court? People generally can't be jailed for debt. But if the subject of a child support order has money and refuses to may, or refuses to take reasonable steps to earn some income, then sometimes the judge has to administer an object lesson on the importance of fulfilling one's obligations. Judges usually don't take that step unless the defendant has demonstrated a long history of irresponsible behavior.

<comment><USER5> It was awhile ago so I don't remember correctly, but you might be right. I just remember thinking this was rooted in the debt he had to pay, and removing his ability to pay the debt, while ostensibly serving to teach him a lesson, didn't seem constructive. Perhaps it was the correct thing to do, perhaps not, it just seemed sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not the social credit system(edit based on OP comment: the dystopic social credit system that people are afraid of). This is just the list of discredited people("Shi Xin Zhe" list) published by China's court system. The whole list is published on [http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/](http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/)

You don't end up on the list for simply owing money (and it has nothing to do with social mis/conduct), you end up on the list for being sued over the money you owe, and the court determining that you do have to pay and that you have the ability to pay based on your personal financials (or if you refuse to disclose your personal financials to the court), and you still refuse to pay. Hence why its maintained by the court system.

The word "Lao Lai" that is quoted to describe them in the article is literally "long term renege".

<comment><USER8> > you end up on the list for being sued over the money you owe

You mean like the summary judgments that can be leveled against debtors in the US by debt collection agencies...

And which...ding your credit score. Which makes it harder to get credit...secure a loan...(sometimes) get housing...(sometimes) get a job

Versus...institutional segregation and denial of services by the government. Definitely not even in the same ballpark and definitely an artifact of the "social credit system" as described by the authors of this article in other comments here as being an accumulated set of practices and programs in China - no single thing.

<comment><USER7> No, I mean like how in the US the creditor can get the court to let them take your property (except certain exempt things like your primary residence) and garnish your wages.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't you agree that court in us and in china are two completely different things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anytime a criticism of China's social credit score is brought up, there's always a "yeah but US credit score", yet I still don't understand how the two are even in the same ballpark.

The social credit score in China is far more invasive and penalizes you for associating yourself with individuals who have low scores.

To compare the two is disingenuous and reaks of whataboutism

<comment><USER11> There are 13million in China social credit system. That's around 1% of the population. On the other hand, the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Which would you prefer? Be thrown in jail; or be limited some freedoms/privileges?

I'll take limited freedom. Maybe, then, I'll have a simple chance to prove my case. From Wikipedia, 21% of prisoners in the US are unsentenced. That's roughly 400,000 persons.

It's as crazy to think that close to a half million people are sitting behind bar with no sentence and probably no resources to fight back.

Yes, China is bad. But I think it is doing better than the US given the resources it has and the population challenges.

<comment><USER12> I'd prefer neither, and as a US citizen reserve the right to criticize the totalitarian practices of both my and foreign governments.

Criticizing evil does not implicitly mean you endorse your own localized evil. The rampant systemic and structural racism and classism built into American society is heinous, but all I can realistically do about it from my vantage point of poor 20 something living in rural PA is vote and advocate for politicians I put my trust in to right the wrongs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > In order for him to clear his debts, Kong argues, he needs to be able to > succeed at his new business – but that is hard to do if prospective partners > and customers shun him because of his official status as a "deadbeat."

This is awful. Totally admit it, they shouldn't do it, etc.

About the same as being a released felon in the United States. We also allow financial information to be pulled for background checks in the United States:

> A check of a candidate's background may include employment, education, > criminal records, credit history, motor vehicle and license record checks.

From [https://www.hireright.com/background-check- faq/answers/what-...](https://www.hireright.com/background-check- faq/answers/what-does-a-background-check-consist-of/)

We already have what is functionally a social credit system in the United States, you'll find the people suffering under it getting harassed by ICE boarding greyhound buses.

<comment><USER14> Not even remotely similar. China's rating system is government-mandated.

In the US, the credit rating system is a creature of, and controlled by, the market. The US imposes very weak regulation on the credit ratings companies for individuals, and almost none at all on the credit ratings companies for businesses.

<comment><USER15> > Not even remotely similar. China's rating system is government-mandated.

Neither one is really optional, so does it matter?

<comment><USER16> In some ways yes, in others no. There is a difference between having the possibility of optionality (you can try something else if you want) and it being completely not optional.

<comment><USER15> We don't _really_ have the ability to "try something else" when it comes to the credit bureaus, barring becoming a hermit. (Which would work in China's case, too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rumor has had it that there is a social credit system in China, and now this report reveals one part of it, which I believe is also just one small piece in the whole mass surveillance puzzle.

As a Taiwanese, I don't know how the system works, nor can I feel the same as what Chinese citizens under that surveillance feel. However I can certainly say that, there must be an another part of the system that monitors "political activists" against CCP. Let's call this part as X below.

Once you are in the blacklist of X due to reasons like criticizing Chinese government, you loses some rights implicitly, and the worst part is that X applies even if you are not a Chinese citizen. I have two examples here:

1\. Taiwanese rights advocate Lee Ming-che held in China

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-39428220](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39428220)

Lee has been in prison since 29 March 2017, because he "ruined Nation Security." He was retained for months before he had a trial.

2\. [Documentary] Self-censorship by Kevin H.J. Lee

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpHFVZX2TuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpHFVZX2TuA)

He criticized CCP and then he could not obtain a visa to even Hong Kong. In this documentary, many instances of such censorship are mentioned, and you can see how the atmosphere is under such surveillance.

<comment><USER18> "..... I don't know how it works ..... however, I can certainly say that , there must be ....."

you lost me there.

<comment><USER17> Just tried to be honest, but sure I should have put that in another way. Thanks for the feedback anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not at all defending the system here, but the article exaggerates quite a bit when talking about the trains.

> In China, only those who cannot afford the high-speed train take the slow > train.

I have taken a similar train from Shanghai to Shenyang, it was also a bit north of 30 hours. Sure, it was not very clean and as everywhere you may encounter unconventional people but in general it's not at all the deadbeat caravan they paint it out to be.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP and Inkstone editor here. The slow train certainly isn't a deadbeat caravan, and I don't think the article suggests that. But it is unusual for a businessman to take this train instead of the high-speed options.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the reply and for doing an article on this.

Of course most businessmen would almost always take the high-speed option, but that is the case in Europe too. I did meet and talk to a man who owned a factory on the train, though, and I get the impression that middle-class people and students will still take it for trips in their free-time. Not necessarily because they can't afford other options and I think it's just untrue that "only those who cannot afford the high-speed train take the slow train". If that had been a quote by the subject, that is one thing, but here it's stated as fact.

Don't you think there's more to the story than that his associates deduced his laolai status just by which train he came by?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Studies, especially in recent years, have shown that punishment is not an effective way of improving on self-destructive behavior. Usually things like procrastination and substance abuse are irrational symptoms of emotional drain and hopelessness, and punishment exacerbates those problems. There was an HN post about it just the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487411). Poverty and debt tend to also protract out from this kind of emotional bankruptcy.

I hold some small hope that despite their lack of empathy, regimes will at least see the practical side of how ineffective this kind of policy is and how much it inevitably will hurt their economy, after trying it out for a while. Hopefully that lesson will be learned while it's still mostly contained to China.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP and Inkstone editor here. I think you raised a really, really interesting point.

One thing I think many people overlook in China's social credit system is its stated goal – to create a system that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior – and whether this system can really tackle self-destructive behavior you describe, like debt.

And what's going to happen to people who're entering a debt spiral, and are as a result further punished by the system? Does the idea of social credit mean these people are simply abandoned?

<comment> dis-sys > And what's going to happen to people who're entering a debt spiral, and are > as a result further punished by the system?

please stop spreading false info. people on that "laolai" list are those who intentionally refuse to pay their debt when they have the resources to do so. as also explicitly mentioned in your own article, they are punished to the extent of being inconvenience to do certain things, e.g. in your described case, they can still ride a train just not the high speed one.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is, as demonstrated in the article, high speed train isn't always a luxury. And the punishment can have the opposite effect of making people to pay their debts.

<comment> dis-sys You are defending those offenders with a passion by completely ignoring the real victims here. When those "laolai" refuse to pay their debts when they have the resources to do so, rather than defending for those "laolai", how about show some decency by thinking about the real life situations of the actual victims who couldn't get their money back from those "laolai" even after court orders?

With 1.4 billion people, surely you can dig up some "opposite effect", but again - how about look at the vast majority of those real victims here? When someone owes you money and the court order says they should pay you back, yet they choose to completely ignore that. It is just shockingly unbelievable that you choose to defend such offenders because they now can't ride high speed rail!

<comment><USER20> At least in America, the vast majority of the time, creditors are huge companies and debtors are individuals who happened to fall on hard times or make financial decisions that didn't pan out. Therefore it's much, much worse when a debtor is unjustly punished than when a creditor unjustly goes unpaid. It's the difference between completely ruining an individual's life, and removing a meaninglessly small amount of money from the pockets of rich people who will remain rich regardless. Are creditors in China commonly non-rich individuals? Are micro-loans a significant portion of what's being talked about here? I'm asking this as a serious question.

<comment> dis-sys > Are creditors in China commonly non-rich individuals? Are micro-loans a > significant portion of what's being talked about here? I'm asking this as a > serious question.

From what I saw/met, most of those debts happened between average individuals. That is how the list end up having millions of cases.

I randomly checked a few cases on that list, most of time, the amount of debts are a few thousand USD. It is not some micro-loans for average guys on streets, it is close to one year of their wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "One creditor said the company was a sham from the beginning, with fabricated expenditure and cooked books."

Looks like the system is working.

If "barred from participation in the securities markets" by the SEC meant flying in coach and no landing slots for private aircraft, it might have more effect.

<comment><USER22> Along that line, if the US had a similar system, our current president would have been marked a "deadbeat" long before he got the chance to run for office (not saying the system is right, just saying)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This system seems inhumane. I'll consider supporting a boycott of China if it would help.

<comment><USER24> In what way would you boycott China? Refuse to buy or use products made there? How likely do you think this could scale to an impact that would meaningfully impact China's trade?

And as horrible as I think the social credit system is, there's an interesting question, as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)?

<comment><USER23> I don't know. I sometimes manufacture physical products. I could state publically that I won't. I could also not buy products made in China personally.

In general we ought to try to change things we don't like. I can't imagine the people of China like this system do they?

<comment><USER24> They do, actually! Source: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what- do-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/21/what-do-people- china-think-about-social-credit-monitoring/)

Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government.

Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin. It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.

<comment><USER25> > It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with > authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.

Also see Hitler's popular approval ratings [0] (Godwin's law notwithstanding). In August 1934, roughly 90% of German voters were in favor of the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor into a single Leader- Chancellor in the person of Adolf Hitler. Note that number should be taken with a big grain of salt, since there was tremendous social and political pressure to vote that way -- and a threat of repercussions for voting "no".

[0] [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0819.html#article)

<comment><USER26> What an absolutely fascinating article to read.

 _In all Bavaria Chancellor Hitler received the largest vote in his favor in the concentration camp at Dachau where 1,554 persons voted "Yes" and only eight "No" and there were only ten spoiled ballots._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't see how this is functionally different than having your wages garnished by a court order. Deadbeat dads are subject to the same financial scrutiny in the US. I get the feeling now that much of the criticism of this system is just Western media clickbait.

<comment><USER28> It is fundamentally different in numerous ways. Being in debt in the western world does not mean you are officially prohibited from certain forms of travel, for starters. Another huge difference is that China's system is based on factors other than financial dealings such as anti-government views. It is a much stricter, less fair, more authoritarian system in nearly every aspect. I find your whataboutism to be highly suspicious.

<comment><USER29> Your last sentence breaks the site guideline against insinuations of astroturfing (and spying or shilling and all the rest of it). Would you please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and stick to the rules when posting here? If anyone wants further explanation, there is plenty at the links here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19496892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19496892).

Also, please don't use the tired trope of "whataboutism" on HN. It contains no information, and is a form of name-calling that breaks the site guidelines as well. More on that: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20whataboutism&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20whataboutism&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

Your comment would be fine without that last sentence.

<comment><USER28> Apologies for breaking the guidelines. I admit the insinuation wasn't entirely appropriate. I regularly encounter obvious pro-China astroturfing on the Internet and I jumped to a premature conclusion/attack in this case.

<comment><USER29> I appreciate the response. We have to be really cautious about this, because the cost of getting it wrong is so high, both to the community and to anyone who is unfairly accused. If you look at the thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19401961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19401961) you'll see an example of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It is an interesting experiment but if it is really a tool for social change then the ability to correct one's score can't really rely entirely on things where the individual has no control.

In the US getting a felony on your record is perhaps the biggest limiter to your future success that you can do. There are so many things stacked against you at that point. In California there is at least a process for getting some felonies expunged, which allows you to get back on to the playing field of life without that weight dragging you down.

The article seems to make the case that the only way the victim could get their status restored was to come up with money somehow to repay debts.

<comment><USER31> It's China. It's a tool for social control and keeping the Communist Party billionaires in power.

<comment><USER32> > the Communist Party billionaires

It's so Orwellian. All of it.

<comment><USER33> The joke goes - When the rest of the world took Orwell's 1984 as a warning, China used it as a model.

However, that joke really isn't true, because all the countries took it as a model, it's just that China seems to be somewhat proud of that fact, whereas the rest tried to do it covertly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This Kafkaesque system will be the end result of the constant increased collection of information from governments (and private businesses, which is the same, they're bed-pals, only after a certain size it's the businesses that wear the strap-on) everywhere.

Technology is a multiplier. It can give us some irrelevant goods (basically, access to every article, news, movie, information without effort, in other words, without any real investment from us, or the ability to make some bureaucratic experience faster, while helping add tons of new bureaucratic requisites that weren't there before), but it mostly multiplies control, and thus dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yes, spending 30 hours on a train and getting 900 miles down the track sounds like a fate worse than death. -Confused American

<comment><USER36> CHI->LAX is 2000 miles in about 45 hours, so still about 40% slower than even US rail travel. I did appreciate the quip though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > If he had money to buy an airline ticket, they told the South China Morning > Post, he should use it to repay what he owed.

This line of thinking spans cultures and completely ignores the velocity or time value of money. It is extremely counterproductive and doesn't factor in what someone is trying to do.

This punitive approach to all forms of spending and consumption hampers the productivity of nations.

A simplistic analysis like this has no way to distinguish someone shirking their debts, and someone reinvesting in a future business prospect, or just unwinding! All humans want to unwind.

People with lower debt ratios do the same thing. They don't always pay things down, don't always prioritize debts in any particular order. So this privilege shouldn't disappear just because someone is visibly having money challenges or merely known to have a creditor.

<comment><USER18> Apparently then a person found out he couldn't fly in airport, he paid back the money straightaway from his phone. True story.

<comment><USER37> got to know your culture then

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The bankruptcy system in the western world is far too lenient; it encourages ruthless risk-taking behavior which benefits selfish people at the expense of those who are socially conscientious. This social credit system doesn't seem so bad when you put things into perspective.

If our system punished selfish people more, as a conscientious individual, I would be better off. I don't buy this bullshit that selfish people drive the engines of progress; they don't drive it; they just capture the proceeds of progress.

John D. Rockefeller himself admitted that "He who works all day, has no time to make money".

<comment><USER39> if you are born poor you miss out on the benefits that allow people to be successful. Take this site for example it encourages people to take risk and start a business. Worst that can happen if most of us fail is that we move in with our parents. If you grew up poor, maybe your parents don't have a place for you to stay if you fail so the ability to start a business is essentially closed to you as you don't have the safety blanket of your middle class colleagues.

To claim that people who declare bankruptcy are selfish is quite a blanket statement and leads me to believe that you have never known poverty. Try being poor or even border line and breaking a leg or having a child get cancer. Try getting laid off for even a few weeks when over 40% of Americans cant even come up with $400 to cover an emergency.

<comment><USER40> I think the above poster is talking about corporate bankruptcy, while you are talking about personal bankruptcy. I agree with both of you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A form of Algorithmic Segregation. Let's not forget who started that trend. Here [1] is a screenshot of an example from 2016. [1] [https://chorasimilarity.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/screen-s...](https://chorasimilarity.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/screen- shot-2016-11-11-at-10-47-16.png)

</comment><comment><USER42> Neuromancer, 1984, William Gibson.

</comment><comment><USER43> I definitely felt on the wrong side of a gazillion popup banners after that click

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry you felt that way. I'm an editor of the website. What pop-up banners did you see? Would love to improve the UX for you and other readers here.

<comment><USER44> Since you are the editor, can you explain the relationship between SCMP and Inkstone? I noticed that this article was also posted on SCMP (with minor differences, curiously enough), so is Inkstone only a way to experiment with a different website design, or will there eventually be Inkstone-exclusive articles?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Sounds like Chinese version of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw)

</comment><comment><USER46> >In some places, telecoms companies even apply a special ringtone to the phone numbers of laolai as a warning.

The ringtone as a scarlet letter...

</comment><comment><USER47> The dystopian cyberpunk world we know from movies, books, video games is getting closer.

</comment><comment><USER37> I can't believe China copied our no-fly list too!

</comment><comment><USER48> You guys do not live in China, you guys cannot understand that in China biggest problem is credit, many people not pay the debt deliberately, many people do not follow the rule. even the reporter herself do not live in China, she live in Hong Kong. I do not know if the social credit system is the right solution, but think more how many people lives in this country, and how law is weak in this country, and how mass the society that is not like western country.</comment>


Amazon offers $10 to Prime Day shoppers who hand over their data - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-prime-day/amazon-offers-10-to-prime-day-shoppers-who-hand-over-their-data-idUSKCN1UB164 <comment><USER2> Just a casual reminder that a portion of Amazon workers are on a strike during the Prime Days.

Support them by not visiting any Amazon property for the next two days. No Amazon purchases, no Audible, no Goodreads, no Twitch. AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not. We can do without them for two days, and show our support for the workers that are protesting inhumane conditions.

<comment><USER3> > _AWS is kinda unavoidable, but the rest is not._

Even AWS is avoidable. The cloud hosting market is competitive if you'd only look around.

<comment><USER2> It's unavoidable in the short term. Way too many websites use AWS for a consumer to boycott them, and if you're using it within a company, you can't switch away easily on a short notice.

But I agree, if you work for a company that relies on AWS, now is the perfect time to re-examine that decision. They were the first ones to fulfill a niche, but there's a bunch of competition now.

<comment><USER4> Someone could create an ad-blocking list for AWS IP ranges, for the purpose of such a boycott. (It is actually easier than boycotting most other commodity suppliers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it is a step forward to pay users for data. Of course, amazon still collects everything it can anyway, for free. But in principle, this is good. But two things.

1\. What is the correct price? Amazon is doing this to better discriminate customers on offerings, price and quality. It's essentially the sophisticated version of what econ 101 calls "siphoning off the consumer surplus by price discrimination". At this stage, it is highly doubtful that the fixed 10 bucks actually represents the true value that the consumer's data.

2\. Externalities. Especially considering that amazon can classify you by other means, people that are like you getting these 10 bucks means that amazon increases its discriminatory power toward you - whether you have gotten the money or not. This is a negative externality - one that the market simply can not solve because we fundamentally lack information and this behavior essentially induces a prisoners dilemma among consumers. Amazon is going to know everything anyway, so I might as well take the 10 bucks.

<comment><USER6> I don't find it a step forward at all. It's a move toward pricing out the privacy-conscious. Right now, auto insurers in Canada will give you a premium reduction if you let them spy on you as you drive. But what happens when that becomes the norm? People end up paying a premium to not be spied on. Eventually privacy becomes unaffordable.

<comment><USER7> Privacy becomes worth what the market will bear. If that's unaffordable, that's just because it's valuable.

There's all sorts of other premiums on the exercise of your rights in a private context. It's very hard to get a job in information sectors that lets you retain copyright of your creative work, or in general a job that lets you exercise your freedom of speech without potentially risking your job. If you have physical handicaps, it's more expensive to get a house and a car that are accessible (because there are fewer opinions on the market), you can't necessarily use public transit, and your choice of jobs is also quite limited. Medication and treatment for chronic conditions, whether physical or mental, often exceeds what your insurance will pay. Having a child is quite expensive. If someone has wronged you, depending on the issue, getting a lawyer may be very pricy.

If we think that the market should not set a price for certain desirable basic things, it seems like the fault is on society for allowing and encouraging the market to do so in general, not on the market participants for taking rational advantage of it in particular cases. Personally, I'm of the opinion that everyone should get privacy for free, but I'm also of the opinion that everyone should get health care for free.

<comment><USER8> In societies which enforce human rights, privacy is upheld through laws, not left to the market.

Leaving it to the market leads to horror scenarios like the one we have to live through right now: the USA's banana republic privacy laws are hurting all of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This go around, "Hey, it's not like it's a total body scan."

Next year, "I did a total body scan at the Amazon Outlet and Care Center and got a free year of Amazon Prime."

Next next year, "The Amazon chip implant was totally painless and I got an account credit of 100 Bezos Bucks."

Next decade, "Alabama is the only state I'm not allowed to marry Alexa."

<comment><USER10> "Bezos Bucks" I find this hilarious and disturbingly real at the same time

<comment><USER4> [http://backtothefuturemuseum.com/it/back-to-the-future- ii/10...](http://backtothefuturemuseum.com/it/back-to-the-future- ii/10-dollari-di-biff)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is honestly frustrating to see whenever massive corporations are responsible for creating a deal in which users will be given away data in order to receive a small compensation. Data, especially personal data should not be a means in which anyone can make any sort of financial compensation from. personal data is stolen every day and used against individuals - and by creating a means in which more people will give you their data, the larger target you have from individuals who are seeking to steal others data.

<comment><USER12> _Data, especially personal data should not be a means in which anyone can make any sort of financial compensation from._

Why? That seems a pretty extreme position.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I thought this was a popular idea around here: _"We should have to explicitly opt-in to data collection, and when we do we should be compensated for our data!"_ Then Amazon actually does it and people are angry?

If anything, this is a great move in the right direction _for_ both privacy and fair compensation: It's opt-in (you're opted out by default), AND you get monetary compensation!

What more could you want? More money? Yeah, but that could actually start to happen if a competitive market of such things grew (though I doubt that will happen so long as it's legal to collect data without compensation or permission; for that we probably need regulation).

Regardless, $10 is far better than the $0 from others who take (and sell) your data without even asking first.

IMO the creepy and dangerous privacy violations come from the always-on tracking systems pervasive throughout the web from Google, Facebook, and others. With those, not only are they on by default without your permission, but you can't opt out, and you receive no compensation!

<comment><USER14> Google actually does allow significant opting out, including for Google Analytics.

I do have problems with their defaults in many of these areas (in my main Google account I have disabled much of the tracking) and also with how certain features (e.g. Google Assistant) tie more of the functionality than necessary to extra permissions with dark pattern nags to grant them all. But the opt- outs are generally there.

(Disclosure: I used to work for Google, but I haven't in over 4 years, and I'm not speaking for them here.)

<comment><USER13> You may be right that Google and others technically offer _some_ tracking opt- out capability (mostly because they were required to by GDPR), but it doesn't seem to work, because _I still regularly receive targeted ads (relating to recent web activity):_

 _... Despite having painstakingly turned off every available tracking switch from every service I've ever signed up to._

 _... Despite no longer using any services from Google, Facebook, and many others (except when I must via a link from someone else)._

 _... Despite using privacy oriented browsers with all privacy features turned on._

There are so many problems with the current "opt out" model:

1\. They do not make it easy to find all these switches. (And it seems intentional, though I can't prove it.) In addition to there being no global "off" switch, they nest countless switches behind deep hierarchical navigation graphs, where it is extremely difficult for a human to reach every node without missing some.

2\. Even when you find the switch, it's not always clear which choice is the "most off" position, and some switches do not have a "fully off" position.

3\. Many switches use extortion to convince you to keep them on: For example, sometimes you'll be shut entirely out of a service for turning off a tracking switch with dubious explanations as to why they can't operate the service without it.

4\. Many switches will automatically and silently turn back on if you so much as visit the wrong link to their service. Sometimes this happens silently, and sometimes it happens via confusing "dark pattern" prompts.

5\. Google isn't the only one. You have to repeat this whole process for every other service you use (if they even have the switches available).

6\. Despite all this, you'll still be tracked by trackers that don't need or want you to have an account with them.

The last item can perhaps be summed up by the fact that I still get very targeted ads for things I've been searching for on DuckDuckGo even despite all these efforts. Clearly trackers are still embedded into various endpoint web pages and are figuring out what I'm doing despite it all.

It's an interesting experiment to try yourself: try to actually not be tracked via a regular or even fairly privacy oriented browser.

As far as I can tell, aside from getting into something like Tor, it really can't be done: If companies can track you, they will. And they can. So they do.

<comment><USER14> I agree with most of what you wrote, yeah. It's a real problem, and the second sentence of my previous comment was meant to affirm that.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I don't think we disagree. I just wanted to list out just how difficult/impossible I've found it to be to break free of the tracking ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least they're transparent about it and you're getting paid for your data.

<comment><USER11> Thats true but I still think it is ridiculous how loosely data is given

<comment><USER16> Yes, but you should acknowledge that you don't get to make that decision for me.

<comment><USER11> I am not, just shared my perspective on the matter

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You get to choose, and they are actually offering to pay you... I thought this is what we wanted people...

</comment><comment><USER18> I still question the idea that "peoples data" is very valuable. I think Amazon is paying $10 for the opportunity to pop up "Hey, buy this on Amazon instead!" ads when you browse other sites.

</comment><comment><USER19> What are the parameters around this? Can you install the assistant make your purchase and then uninstall it, or does it have to stay installed for some specified period of time?

<comment><USER20> Yes, you can uninstall it after you received your 10$ off. But the average user will probably just leave it installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The deal is for new installations of the Amazon Assistant, a comparison- > shopping tool that customers can add to their web browsers. It fetches > Amazon's price for products that users see on Walmart.com, Target.com and > elsewhere.

Shoptimate extension has been doing that for 9 years without selling your data.

[http://www.shoptimate.fr/about/privacy/](http://www.shoptimate.fr/about/privacy/)

</comment><comment><USER22> What a sneaky wording.

> _fetches Amazon's price for products that users see on Walmart.com, > Target.com and elsewhere._

To me that reads: "we will turn your computer to a node in our scraping botnet". I would guess the internal documents they have will refer to this as market research, but the fact remains that this sounds like a botnet under construction.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't sound like scraping. What they do is they fetch the prices for their own products when the users browses a competitor. The prices of their competitors' products are already in the open, they won't need them. What they need is the browsing history of their customers in order for whaterver they want to better understand about the shopping process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Since this is causing such an uproar over privacy, instead I'd like to pose some ethical questions:

\- Would you be willing to receive a basic living wage for sharing your information?

\- Do you think some people's information is valued at more or less than your own and why?

\- Would you be willing to receive payment for sharing your information that is valued at what the market dictates? Why?

\- Based on the previous question, does your opinion change if the payment was enough to be a living wage (though still varying based on market demands)?

</comment><comment><USER25> What is missing, compared to other platforms, is that there is no revocable consent to prevent and deter third parties from using the collected data in this transaction, no dynamic market based pricing of your data, and no immutable record of the revoked consent or violation on the revoked consent

would love to see Amazon push toward those goals

</comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like a deal for me "he visits us, reddit - where he uses his real name, hacker news -where he uses his real name and YouTube where he uses his real name, he's incredibly boring"

</comment><comment><USER27> prime-day-boycott: the day all tech companies realized amazon had them in their pockets with AWS

the day everyone woke up and realize the lies of multi-cloud. Everyone's architecture is naked, and tied to one particular provider.

if you can't flip a button and serve from other provider for the strike, you will also not be able to change when aws crashes, get slow or too expensive. Or what is more likely, slow unless you pay the aws-prime subscription ;)</comment>


JavaScript can double your codebase so make sure you need it first - <AUTHOR> http://mat-mcloughlin.github.io/2013/08/12/javascript-can-double-your-codebase-so-make-sure-you-need-it-first.html

<comment><USER2> There isn't a lot of detail on exactly _how_ javascript is used in this codebase so it is hard to comment. Having worked in .NET web shops there is a tendency to be very back-end (and .NET) oriented and not really having a lot of deep expertise in the web, particularly on the front-end. I don't want to assume this (the author mentioned UX and some other things which tends to lead me to believe they do have this kind of expertise). There is also a tendency to avoid technologies that can make working with the web easier. I'm talking about things like Ember or Angular, build tools like Grunt or some kind of asset pipeline for work so javascript can be more organized and structured and you can write less of it.

In the end web development on the .NET platform (can be) is harder and front- end development doubly so. I'll admit this is my experience so YMMV.

In the author's defence though I agree Javascript, when compared with many other languages, particularly Java or C# is often unwieldily, there is little help for how code is structured or organized and architecture of any sort is more challenging. That said it can be done, just not the way you might be used to in a more OOP C# or Java.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm working on a fairly substantial SPA now, and while I think these costs are worth it for my use case, they certainly are real costs and should be carefully considered.

<comment><USER4> What does 'SPA' mean? The author does not open it and the acronym is quite ungoogleable.

<comment><USER5> SPA = single page app</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Python TDD project skeleton - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/l0b0/python-skeleton <comment><USER2> .idea should be removed.

Also this: [https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject](https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject)

I trust PyPA, and in many ways they get to set what "canonical" is, so for something like this, if they say it, it's therefore true.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best online course for Wordpress? - <AUTHOR>

For front-end developers without wordpress experience. <comment><USER2> You may want to start here [http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons](http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons)

</comment><comment><USER3> What is your goal? Do you want to create a theme, plugin or do consulting?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm training for a job prospect that is mainly focused on theme development.</comment></comment>


China's secret space fighter plane - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/while-the-world-watched-the-j-20-test-china-was-deleting-posts-about-a-space-fighter/story-e6frfro0-1225987133483 <comment><AUTHOR> More info here

[http://www.news.com.au/technology/china-tests-new-stealth- fi...](http://www.news.com.au/technology/china-tests-new-stealth- fighter/story-e6frfro0-1225987133629)</comment>