No, this is generally not true.
Unless you're a public figure and only then in specific circumstances.
Almost nobody holds people accountable for what their friends do.
Bill Clinton's brother was a drug dealer.
Barak Obama's father was a kind of unsavoury deadbeat dad.
I suppose both of them would have had nary enough 'social credit' to become President.
Also - it's borderline shocking to hear a casual defence of this system. Theoretically yes, I can see a rhetorical argument, but in practice it's pretty scary. In America people do have 'credit scores' but that's generally a more open thing, and you still get to vote and ride the subway if you have low credit score.
Speaking of Clinton, is "immediately and forcefully disavow" not exactly what his Sister Souljah moment was? Ditto for Obama's Jeremiah Wright moment.
More generally, if you're Facebook friends with or a Twitter follower of someone of interest to the state security services, like a radical Islamic preacher for example, do you really not think that is being recorded somewhere?
It's a tremendous difference...
the US government doesn't give sufficient services that you can live just fine without a good credit score, so in essence, it is penalizing you. it's just a distributed punishment