cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/536301

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The Russia’s State Social University (RSSU) has launched a “social rating” platform that claims to build a person’s “social portrait” with possible applications in future government policies.

Named “We,” the platform promises to determine a user’s comparative “social status” based on a survey that includes questions about income, family status, benefits, creditworthiness, criminal record, lifestyle and state awards, among others.

“The social rating figures don’t affect [a person’s] life, the availability of services or the career trajectory in any way,” RSSU said on the platform’s website. “But who knows what these figures will mean for you in the future?”

Observers on social media compared the platform’s name “We” to the highly influential 1921 dystopian novel of the same name by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. [The novel “We” describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. It inspired British author George Orwell to write his own novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, which was published in 1949.]

  • yuri@pawb.social
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    5 months ago

    “The social rating figures don’t affect [a person’s] life, the availability of services or the career trajectory in any way, but who knows what these figures will mean for you in the future?”

    What does that even mean? You can’t say “they won’t affect you” and also “who knows how they will affect you?”

  • jarfil@beehaw.org
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    5 months ago

    “Give us all data about you… we’ll decide what to make out of it later”

    What a deal! 🤦

  • algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 months ago

    You have posted anti-party memes to American social media, -15,000,000 social credit. Your family will now be sent to Gulag.

    • sunzu@kbin.run
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      5 months ago

      We call it the credit score and criminal record, it feels more daddy capitalism

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Finally a way to determine social status!

    Humanity’s been really slipping on its social status evaluation game up to now.

    • millie@beehaw.org
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      5 months ago

      You know what they say: fives have lives, fours have chores, threes have fleas, twos have blues, and ones don’t get a rhyme because they’re garbage!