frustrated lately that my rating as a
passenger in Uber is at 4.78 and falling
I mean, of all things, I don't even like the HN karma system. Arbitrary frowny faces for The Wrong Kind of Joke only now, scale that up first, just to taxi drivers, and then apply it to Society At Large, All Day Every Day.
Every consumer interaction now rates you as a customer. Amazon will drop you if you return too many things. Uber/Lyft have ratings systems. etc.
Until we start making the holding of personal information the equivalent of holding toxic sludge, nothing will change.
Is it possible to fix this? Am I going to have to change my name, email, and phone number before I can use Uber again? And how is this AT ALL better than the old taxi system, where the taxi company owned the car and was able to insure itself against this kind of damage caused by passengers? Not to mention that if Uber is successful, it's likely to become the only game in town - whereas taxi services are quite diverse by comparison.
Also, why do you assume that I have to be a "bad person" to get a bad rating? What if I'm a minority living in an area where my background is looked upon with suspicion or hatred?
It is crazy the latter could land you on a blacklist. A rating system is not necessary. A reporting system for the rotten apples would suffice, and the rest of the customers would be unrated.
The guy brought to hospital may end up in coma. Not able to clean up.
With reporting you cannot have a pissed-off driver land a pregnant women on a blacklist because she delivered her child in the car, and there is now blood on the seats.
There is some occupational hazard for taxi drivers and others in public transport. The provider company or insurance should cover cleanup costs.
You know what you did wrongly to lose points, so that you can avoid it next time.
You also know what are good things that you can do to improve your score.
Except if you don't agree with the definition of "wrong" and "good".
THAT you can't correct.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/12/chinas-chilling-social-c...
Then the rules system is very complex, and probably will be ever changing, being fine-tuned. There are rules in preparation (or already implemented) where your network of friends and relatives affect your credit score, etc. Very dystopic social engineering.
It will be harder and harder to check whether all rules are applied equally across all people, I imagine.
> There are rules in preparation (or already implemented) where your network of friends and relatives affect your credit score, etc.
Are these your opinions or facts? I'm talking about facts here.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+social+credit+blacklist&t=fp...
There are also many mentions of your friends network affecting your score, like in this Wired article from 2017:
> Zhima Credit’s algorithm considers not only whether you repay your bills but also what you buy, what degrees you hold, and the scores of your friends.
I think you misunderstood what this means. It means when taking loans, the algorithm takes into account your score as well as your friends. This assertion in itself I must say I didn't find from any other sources.
This, even if proven to true, is completely different from what you are suggesting (i.e. your friend's score affecting your score).
Also, this Zhima Credit is just a private owned, part of the system which focuses on financial well being of individuals, it's not linked to other component of the system. Other social score components might not have this network effect.
> But that is not the half of it. Scores will also be awarded to citizens according to who they associate with. If your social media connections consist exclusively of senior government officials and respectable party ideologues, the chances are the presiding algorithm will allot you the equivalent of a triple-A rating. But if you happen to have exchanged messages with someone who is friends with a human rights lawyer or the imam at the local mosque, you could rapidly find your status cut to junk.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2131737/china...
I was looking for another article that explains it in more detail still, but cannot find it. But have seen this described in many places. I haven't been to China, and can't tell how far they are in their implementation. Just going from news sources.
2. The author seems to reference the official document from the government. I did an extensive review of official document on social credit system (link in my profile), and didn't find anything describing such thing.
Maybe it is just a feature of the Zhima Credit (a private financial credit system), which happens to be included social credit system.
To me, as a lay man reading about all that is planned already, it does not seem all that far-fetched to see this being implemented soon. But as you rightfully say: it's the facts that count.
I need to bookmark this.
Because in China, it would be the government giving you the rating, not other people.