The Chinese government’s problematic quest to judge online comments

As the idea of building social creditworthiness increasingly creeps into other regulations, it shows the risks of standardizing a practice where the government makes moral judgements for its people.

A regulation dedicated to online comments was finalized last week by China's Cyberspace Administration. Under the same strict controls China has always had for other online content, the main purpose of the regulation is to place social media interactions, including those in newer forms, under the same.

The rules are not part of the social credit system. Credit appraisals of public account-operators' management of post comments are asked of social media platforms.

If a user posts something that is not trustworthy, that should be reflected in the user's credit assessment. The scope of services andFunctionality will be determined by the results of the credit assessment

There are other examples of the Chinese government justifying more rules with the use of trust and creditworthiness. When the government decided to create a blacklist of celebrities who promote bad morals, crack down on social media bots, and designate responsibilities to administrators of private group chats, this was seen.

The development of China's social credit system is closely related to the development of more authoritarian policies in the country. As China becomes more focused on people's social and cultural lives, further regulating the content of entertainment, education, and speech, those rules will be subject to credit enforcement.

When people talk about the social credit system, they tend to exaggerate perceived risks, which is why I want to caution against that.

The good news is that the control of online speech has been limited so far. The draft regulation to build a social credit system for the internet has not been enacted. A lot of the talk about establishing credit appraisal systems for social media, like the one requested by the latest regulation on online comments, looks like a waste of time. Some social platforms have their own credit scores, but they are not the most important features in China.