Paypal is doing this now, in partnership with the SPLC.
> When [reporter] Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of untrustworthy people. Liu is a journalist who was ordered by a court to apologize for a series of tweets he wrote and was then told his apology was insincere.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-social-credit-system-surv...
> Liu had posted information about embezzlement by a local official, Ma Zhengqi, on his personal page on the Weibo social network because he knew that censorship would prevent its publication in the newspaper.
That's why I put it in quotes. "Bad" in this case depends on what a company thinks makes you high-risk or otherwise undesirable as a customer.
In the case of health insurance, it may be when Google or Facebook classifying you as having a sedentary lifestyle. In the case of banks it may be if you take too many trips to Vegas. In the case of the NSA, it may be posting negative things about the current administration. Because it's distributed among many actors, it will be like the existing credit score system - mostly opaque and unaccountable. Good luck convincing an insurance company that Google misclassified your behaviour.
China's system is hand-cranked and top-down. The Facebook/Google system has a life of its own that pervades the very foundations of its host.
Facebook/Google/Paypal provide a new vector of boycotting/vigilantism. People with ideologies sufficiently unpopular with the mainstream get targeted for boycotts, which can spread to the rest of their financial and social network. This effect is impossible to separate from society because its an expression of something that's always been part of human society -- shaming and shunning.
The Chinese system is top down, and designed to maintain the Communist Party's hold on power. Every aspect of the system is dictated from the top, so of course it could easily be dismantled or changed.
You're not thinking big enough. Already, even details like mobile location information is leaking into the hands of bounty hunters[1], which means such information is probably easily available to less controversial operations like insurance companies. Wait until a "background check" for housing means asking Facebook if you've ever expressed an interest in smoking.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/08/companies-resell-us-carr...
More generally, there's a big difference between "we won't let you do X because we don't trust you" versus "we won't let you do X because we have moral objections to something you've done." China's social credit system takes the latter into account.
Edit: Frankly, I'm getting pretty tired of this "the US is no better" discussion every time there's a news story about China's social credit system. The US has some major problems, but conflating the two is a false equivalence. When CNN reporters are banned from flying because the president thinks they're "fake news", we can have this discussion again.
Put another way, there's a reason free speech (as it's defined in the US) applies to the government and not private entities.
What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/06/opinion-analysis-court-ru...
> The opinion seemed to leave open the possibility that, in a future case, a service provider’s sincere religious beliefs might have to yield to the state’s interest in protecting the rights of same-sex couples, and the majority did not rule at all on one of the central arguments in the case – whether compelling Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex couple would violate his right to freedom of speech.
> Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately, in an opinion joined by Gorsuch, to address an issue that the court did not decide: whether an order mandating that Phillips bake cakes for same-sex weddings violates his right to free speech. In Thomas’ view, Phillips’ creation of custom wedding cakes is exactly the kind of “expressive” conduct protected by the First Amendment. Requiring Phillips to make such cakes for same-sex marriage, even when it will convey a message that “he believes his faith forbids,” violates his First Amendment rights.
Per the majority opinion:
> But even if those objections are protected, Kennedy explained, the Supreme Court’s precedents make clear that in some cases the right to the free exercise of religion is not absolute and can instead be limited by neutral laws that apply to everyone.
It's entirely possible a more neutral proceeding would've been upheld. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/0...
> There is no majority that would have found for the baker absent the discriminatory comments by the commission; in fact, Kennedy strongly hints he might have gone the other way had the commissioners maintained their neutrality. By the same token, there were only two justices who would side against someone discriminating against gay customers no matter the specifics of the case.
> The State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed. But the official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments were inconsistent with that re-quirement, and the Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same.
Kennedy, Roberts, Breyer, Alito, Kagan and Gorsuch joined this wording. Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented on the grounds that they'd have ruled for Colorado.
We've got plenty of evidence that religious freedom is not absolute when it comes to discrimination. You can't refuse to employ black people or Jews because your religious beliefs forbid it, for example.
Such speculation was possible in June of 2018, but hard to defend now.
First, cases take a long time to wind through this process. SCOTUS picks cases for the next year, they take months to decide and write up, and all this requires a test case to have reached them in the first place.
The justices may also not yet feel comfortable enough that they know exactly where the dividing line is to take on a test case, either.
Not much moves quickly in the court system. Not having a follow-up a case in the very next term isn't indicative of much.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty...
If what you're trying to say is "The American political right wing has grown to distrust the SPLC," I'd agree, but I'd note it's the same right wing that couldn't seem to find its voice to condemn a political rally where participants shouted "Jews will not replace us" and "Blood and soil," a rally that resulted in the death of one counter-protester due to vehicular homicide.
Given the evidence I see, sadly, it's not the SPLC I'm leaning towards distrusting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty...
agreed, not the CP of china, but some of the facts detailed in that article, even if selectively curated to prove a point, seem a bit egregious and wacky..
> Marc Alexander Thiessen (born January 13, 1967) is an American author, columnist, and political commentator. He writes for The Washington Post newspaper. He served as a speechwriter for United States President George W. Bush (2004–09) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2001–06).
> (...) His one book is a defense of the Torture Memos and "enhanced interrogation methods" used by the CIA under the George W. Bush administration.
Take that as you will.
you mean like, by prefacing with a big disclaimer like:
"here's the generally slightly left leaning washington post allowing publication of an OP-ed entitled"
if it were that far out there, they wouldn't publish it.
Thankfully Maajid sued them for millions and won.
Edit: it should say “settled for millions” instead of “won”. My bad.
> The Southern Poverty Law Center, the venerable civil-rights organization, has issued a formal apology to British political activist Maajid Nawaz and will make a $3.4 million payment over his inclusion in a 2016 list of “anti-Muslim extremists.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/maajid-...