Western perception of “Social credit” largely propaganda btw and if you believe it isnt then you got manipulated.
Both are bad and both countries are authoritarian shit holes
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Two things can suck at the same time.
That's what he said! ... wait
With or without credit scores, banks are going to be assessing you for whether you're likely to pay back the loans they provide. Even if you deleted all credit scores overnight so everyone had to do individual assessments, you're still getting assessed and a credit score in all but name will emerge. If you're a high risk, banks will just put a big mark on your name that says "Don't lend to this person, they don't pay their debts" like they do in Austria.
The only real difference between the US Credit Score and the Chinese Social Credit is that the Chinese Social Credit takes other factors into account in whether you are considered worthy enough to have a loan, which isn't aaaall that different to how it's done in the UK, where registering to vote makes your credit score go up, but then again lenders in the UK don't tend to use credit scores for things like mortgages, they use their own checks.
banks are going to be assessing you for whether you're likely to pay back the loans they provide
Actually, this is not quite accurate. It's more accurately a score that summarizes how much the banks would want to lend you money. It is designed to make sure you are profitable not just in your ability to simply pay back a loan, but also to make them money.
And, statistically, it's also systemically racist.
It was systematically racist before credit scores as well. Before credit scores, whether you got a loan was dependent on the bank manager 'liking you', and by that I mean if you stepped into that room with skin any darker than the sheets the bank manager wore at the weekend, you weren't getting a loan.
The only time you need to borrow money from a bank is of you are buying a house, really. Remove the strong incentive to buy a place to live and then a credit score becomes a vague thing that only people working in finance know or care about.
9/10 times yeah you're only really borrowing money from a bank for mortgages and that's the only loan you NEED to have. Otherwise there's credit cards, small business loans, car loans etc. You can probably get-by without those though.
Because our ssn was stolen many of times, our credit score was low even after we fought off all the charges and couldn’t get an apartment without a garentour. Moved to Spain and never needed a garentour or social check in basic necessities, hell we could go for a loan and the only thing judged is our reasoning. Slowly waiting for permanent residency and citizenship :)
Isnt social credit system just a meme?
No, it effects a lot of ways in which you are allowed to live
Not sure why you got a downvote, this is absolutely true. If you have a low SSC you may be subject to travel bans, reduced employment prospects, being barred from attending certain schools, increased surveillance and police monitoring, and public shaming. Other individuals can also have their scores lowered by interacting with you.
It's like that black mirror episode free fall
So actually looked into the social credit system a while ago and it turns out a lot of it is myth and it seems to have been largely wound down after some abuse by some of the ?prefectures? where it was trialed and used to punish a few people (it was supposed to reward good behaviour by businesses and institutions apparently) but what remains did strike me as very similar to credit score, although it's maybe slightly more accountable? Maybe?
Anyway both seem dogshit, although a system verifying how organisations actually act (e.g. counter greenwashing and shit with hard evidence) would be cool if anyone could make it work.
The ABC (Australian public broadcaster) did a thorough explainer debunking many of the myths around it recently.
As usual, investigation into socialist practices reveals that the negative opinions held by the west are largely based on propaganda and lies.
If you lack sufficient Internet points you cannot discuss that here.
I don't think many people in the West like credit score system either tbh
Since this is an anarchist instance, I was willing to give OP the benefit of a doubt that this is against states in general but, alas, reading their comments it is whataboutism
In another thread they were praising Stalin so I don’t think they deserve benefit of the doubt.
i'm getting close to blocking. their behavior i feel violates rule 6 (or 7 i can't see the sidebar on mobile) that users of this community should not deify past socialist experience. they have demonstrated a pattern of behavior that strongly favors imperialism with a veneer of leftist aesthetic. the mods ignoring this pattern in the face of reports has left a really bad taste in my mouth that's been slowly driving me away from dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, two of my former favorite instances aside from my own here at slrpnk.net.
totalitarian authoritarian regimes are what socialism and communism are meant to be an alternative to, not something we should celebrate as long as they wear a red coat of paint. it's been very dissapointing as the rules of this communicate that this is supposed to be a generally left comm but more and more it's just !memes@lemmy.ml but on another instance
Yes I do feel leftymemes @ dbzer0 unfortunately has a sizeable ML influence.
The main mod of this community actually does some soviet union apologia I think. Which means the rules 6 basically isnt followed while they’re in charge.
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What the fuck is this nonsense?
Nobody likes credit scores but it's at least marginally financial measurements that are used for financial decisions.
It's regressive, but only because our society is regressive. A middle class person who overspends and doesn't pay their bills on time is probably gonna get treated worse than a poor person who needs groceries and fails to pay their grocery bills on time, yes. But it's still financial.
The poor person isn't being stopped from buying a train ticket. They might not have money to do so, but that's a different societal fuck up.
At least compare apples to apples.
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Not to say credit scores are fun, but comparing the two is kinda absurd. Credit scores are calculated by private companies and used by banks to determine your eligibility for a loan. Essentially, it's an averaged history of how good you are at repaying debt, and it's used to determine if you will repay future debt. The people who calculate your score have no interest in how it affects you. The social credit system is a government score and has tons of things that can affect it, and there's plenty of opportunity for fudgery to screw you over. There are tons of ways in can negatively affect you. Worst of all, it can be used to deny international flights, and in effect your ability to escape the system. Since this is actually run by the government, it creates an avenue for punishing political dissent and control that just doesn't exist with credit scores.
Right in the first half, extremely wrong in the second half (But you should be forgiven, we all get heavily propagandized about this stuff). What we know of the Chinese "social credit" score in the west is largely a tall tale / myth. Here, from the top of the English wikipedia article about the Chinese system:
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit "score" based on individuals' behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[4][5][6] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.[4][7] According to a February 2022 report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a social credit "score" is a myth as there is "no score that dictates citizen's place in society".[4]
It's still a credit score system, so it's still one of those dumb monolithic systems a large authoritarian country implements when it can't be bothered to keep track of it's citizens on a qualitative level - Like FICO in the US - But it doesn't leak outside of that context in the way we westerners are told. In fact, our myths about that probably came out of the incidents in 2019 when the central government tamped down on local abuses of the system.
The main difference is that credit score exists while the Chinese social score doesn't.
The Social Credit doesn't exist, FICO does. One has more impact because it's real.
The US has both:
The Chinese Social Credit score is where your Facebook and other social media are scoured by HR before you are hired. But if you are rich, your Facebook posts don't matter because your Dad made you an executive the company.
A Credit Score is pure capitalism. You can be a racist asshole and get the best deal from banks because you have money.
China is no different with their Princeling "Fuerdai".
So credit scores are... good?
I hate you.
Could at least argue credit shows your payment history and debt to income ratio, social credit score could be literally anything. Both can suck at the same time.
759 credit score. Still don't qualify.
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