Silicon Valley Copycats China's Orwellian Social Credit Scheme

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/silicon-valley-copycats-chinas-orwellian-social-credit-scheme/amp/

Comments

[Huk]

IMHO the problem here is not that you can be banned for something, but that you may never find out for what or how to fix it.

A few years back, I worked for a company that did search engine optimization for various business (operations that makes your site appear at the top of Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other SE, when user looks for something). We used what is known as White SEO - something Google, Bing and other search engines should treat as a 100% legal.

One day, out of the blue, Google decided to punish several of our customers, dropping their sites from the first page to the fifth or tenth. For one of our customers (an online shop selling hardware tools) it reduced the number of orders from 50 per day, to 2-3 per day, and the owner was begging us to do something, or he's going out of business soon.

We called Google Poland and asked what happen and why sites were punished. Their answer?

"Yes, we updated our algorithms recently, and yes it marked your clients' pages as using black SEO, so they were punished. Why? Oh that's classified. How to fix it? That's classified too."

"Sir, our client is close to bankruptcy because of this! Tell us what did we do wrong so we can fix it."

"We're an Independent company. We don't have to tell you anything. You can always use other search engine. Good bye."

Except you can't. Google is de facto standard search engine for 80-90% of people. You're not on Google, you don't exist. I know most people - especially, people from the USA - don't want to hear it, but when something becomes so big that it can make or break life of others with one decision, it is time to regulate it.

The law should be simple: You can use any 'Social Credit System' you want, but all the rules must be visible and clear for everyone. If someone gets banned or punished, he should know why - no more 'it's our platform, we can do whatever we want!' bs.

Looking at what Facebook, Google and other big companies are doing, IMHO such law is inevitable.

[Final fantasy forever]

Not good at all, people need to stop following this path