The Smile Machine 2020 (2018)

Starting 2020, the Chinese government will mandatorize a social project called the Social Credit System. This system takes five different criteria of their citizens; their online presence on social media, their social interactions in public, their credit history, their spending habits and also their compliance overall towards the Chinese government. The government will rank their citizens from a score from 350 to 950 and depending on their score, they will either receive benefits or punishments to go towards their everyday life. There are currently a few big Financial companies who are testing out their own Social Credit System, taking their users private data and analyzing them to then rank them with a score, and such depending on this score, it will let them reap the rewards. These trial systems currently are only giving out rewards for those who do have a high social score, but what happens in the year 2020 when this mandatory Social Credit System implemented in the entire country will not only give rewards, but also punishments for not being a compliant citizen.

These scores are influenced by also their circle of peers, and therefore friends and family will have their social scores judged based on one another. Each connected person will be influenced by the people that they would keep around.

The Smile Machine 2020 is a critical machine, alongside a web interface, that “encourages” its users to share their personal data and opinions online while rewarding them with badges.

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