The mass communication available today through the technology of the internet is at its peak right now because of social media being the dominant new “public square”. In fact, this directly relates to how consumers are taking advantage of social platforms on the internet. For example, on YouTube, we are seeing a plethora of content creators producing their own vlogs, news shows, and video game streams. It is this web craze that we are in today that has caught the larger media corporations off guard because they are now competing with individuals with a significant internet presence on numerous platforms. “Old media firms are scrambling to create new revenue sources by either selling content online or developing new ad-supported outlets like the Hulu video service” (Straubhaar, LaRose and Davenport 277). Similarly, as more social media businesses are purchased by the larger technology firms they gain more power along with a tremendous accumulation of user internet data. “In a series of filings spanning almost a decade, Facebook has obtained several patents that allow social media platforms to track, identify, and classify individuals in new and innovative ways” (Li). Since consumers today are ceding control over to a few large technology companies it is necessary to explore how internet data ties in with the Social Credit System, what manipulation of freedoms can occur, and the biblical perspective pertaining to truth.
To open, consumer control being obtained through the progression of technology is merely an influential battle of nature and nurture. To get a better view of this, let us eliminate the spectrum of technology, and simply consider character traits under the umbrella of the imagination of a child with siblings around the same age versus a single child. For instance, each family will be viewed as hermits from the outside world. It can be argued that, the single child will likely have a more active imagination because the alone time will stimulate creativity on a constant basis with elements such as imaginary friends, reading, writing, drawing, and painting. Conversely, the child with siblings can still produce an effective flowing imagination, but reliance is not needed fully because there are others to spark inspired artistry. Generally speaking, this brief example is very similar to the pros and cons of services provided by the technological media companies. Certainly, if we look at the vast information we have at our finger tips as a positive, then we can come to utilize the benefits of consumer control. In particular, the single child atmosphere now shifts to the child with siblings premise because through social networking a collective imagination becomes a new creative tool to share ideas. The downside to this is that, by joining social media there are companies that purchase information for the purposes of advertising. Facebook as an example, will then take these profits, and buy up newer smaller companies as was the case with Instagram.
In the Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook, INC. point sixteen submits:
The Instagram acquisition has given Facebook control over its most significant personal social networking competitor, which both neutralizes the direct threat that Instagram posed by itself, and, additionally, makes it more difficult for other firms to use photo-sharing via smartphones to gain traction in personal social networking. Through its control of Instagram, Facebook has attempted to prevent Instagram from “cannibalizing” Facebook Blue, confirming that an independent Instagram would constitute a significant threat to Facebook’s personal social networking monopoly. (Attorneys for Plantiff Federal Trade Commission)
Clearly, anytime there is less competition in a particular market control remains absolute. For this reason, it is crucial how the implementation of big television companies become integrated with the net because too many mergers will result in more monopolistic conglomerates.
Jumping back to the child with siblings scenario, we can now see that despite the pros of a collective imagination being utilized the business model of social media is to act as an intercepting/listening device gathering up data for profit. Shoshana Zuboff remarks, “You know, we came into this new world thinking that we were users of social media. It didn’t occur to us that social media was actually using us. We thought that we were searching Google; we had no idea that Google was searching us” (PBS Frontline- In the Age of AI – Transcript). To enumerate, the single child or lone voice now becomes lost due to joining the algorithmic world of the social interwebs. As competition to be heard becomes a dominate force the business model of social media evolves towards an influential deceptive hierarchy. According to Kate Crawford, “What we’re looking at now, with current tools and machine learning, is the ability for manipulation, both in terms of elections and opinions, but more broadly, just how information travels. That is a much bigger problem and certainly much more serious than what we faced with Cambridge Analytica” (PBS Frontline- In the Age of AI – Transcript).
Shifting slightly, with the established truth of algorithm manipulation in play, it is essential to explore how this same tactic has been used in the construction of the Social Credit System (SCS) in China. In Disenchanting Trust: Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Governance, and China’s Emerging Social Credit System Sheng Zou writes: “The 2014 Planning Outline envisions the SCS to be a panacea for problems in four different domains: administrative and government affairs, business and commercial activities, judicial affairs, and social interactions” (Zou). In other words, the government has fully bought into the plan that they are the remedy for improving society across each avenue of life including within their own governance.
In Society Caught in a Labyrinth of Algorithms: Disputes, Promises, and Limitations of the New Order of Things, Tomas Hauer notes:
The government wants to monitor this using more than 170 million security cameras, AI algorithms, smart goggles and face recognition technologies. However, the overall score will be affected by all sorts of misconduct, from bad driving and crossing the street outside the zebra crossing or on a red traffic light, smoking in non-smokerzones, online false reporting, to whether an individual prefers imported goods to goods produced in China, or whether he or she buys large amounts of video games. If the score is too low, for example, a person might have trouble buying a ticket, renting a house, gaining access to high-speed Internet, taking a loan, or applying for managerial or academic positions. (Hauer 228)
In this case, the gathering of data for each individual throughout society allows for computer algorithms to generate scores that equate to a corporate and government grading system based upon behavior.
In view of the SCS system being utilized as an invasive instrument, attention to how personal freedoms are impacted is imperative. Xiao Qiang mentions, “Right now there is no final system being implemented. And from those experiments we already see that—the possibility of what this social credit system can do to individual. It’s very powerful, Orwellian-like, and it’s extremely troublesome in terms of civil liberty” (PBS Frontline- In the Age of AI – Transcript). Evidence of freedoms being stripped away from people due to the Social Credit System’s incursive trespasses into privacy are said to exist with the Uyghurs and other Muslims in China.
Darren Byler comments:
You start out with 100 points and you’re a safe person, and then for each category that applies to you, you’re deducted 10 points. Some of the categories are, for instance, are you a Uyghur? Are you between the ages of 15 and 55? Do you have Islamic knowledge? Do you pray regularly? Do you have relatives living abroad? Do you have a passport? The government quickly realized that the number of unsafe people that they were finding was quite large. So the state began to build out camps on a large scale. (PBS Frontline-China Undercover)
Specifically, the claim here is that, the manipulation of human behavior based upon the grading scale of the Social Credit System is set by the government in power. On December 4, 2018, under testimony before the United States Senate, Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby testified, “Since April 2017, Chinese authorities have detained at least 800,000, and possibly more than 2 million, Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities in internment camps for indefinite periods of time” (Testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby). “Xu Guixiang, Spokesperson of Information Office of People’s Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region”, denied these claims at a press conference in 2021. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China)
Xu Guixiang stated:
Recently, based on lies and false information, the European Union, the United States, Britain and Canada have imposed unilateral sanctions on relevant individuals and entities in Xinjiang China under the pretext of the so-called “human rights in Xinjiang”. This act has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, seriously interfered in China’s internal affairs, and seriously hurt the feelings of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China)
At the same press conference held by the Xu Guixiang, he introduced graduate Tahiljan Tohti. Tahiljan Tohti adds :
My name is Tahiljan Tohti. I am a graduate trainee of vocational education and training center in Hotan city, Hotan Prefecture. The vocational education and training center is a school. From Monday to Friday, we had six classes every day, learning the national language, legal knowledge, vocational skills and de-radicalization knowledge and so on. We had rich life in our school. We often held basketball games, sports competitions and other activities. Our class once won the first place in a basketball game. There is a clinic at the school and doctors are on shift 24 hours. When we had headache and cold or didn’t feel well, we could go there for diagnosis and treatment at any time. The school respected our customs very much. The canteen provided us with many kinds of nutritious halal food free of charge every day. We lived in a dormitory with a TV, an electric fan and a bathroom. The teachers in the school cared about us like our family members. When we got sick, they were busy taking care of us. At school, we could contact our family and friends at any time and ask for leave at any time. We had regular rest on Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays. The religious trainees could participate normal religious activities at mosque or at home. After I finished my education and training, I opened a restaurant and a property company. I use what I have learned about enterprise management, laws and regulations in the vocational education and training center in the operation and management of my restaurant and company. Now there are over 60 employees working in my restaurant and property company, and I have a monthly income of 20,000 yuan. In the future, I plan to open several more branches of my company to lead my employees to earn more money and live a better life. Those people abroad say that our vocational education and training center is “concentration camp” and “trainees have been tortured. It is totally a lie. My classmates and I are very grateful to the vocational education and training center. It is the vocational education and training center that helped us get rid of religious extremism and return to the normal life. Thank you. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China)
As can be seen, here is a situation where two parties are telling different stories thus making truth harder to be uncovered. A cogent argument can be made that the hypothetical scenario of the single child/ lone voice becoming lost due to joining the algorithmic world of the social interwebs has proven itself to be authentic. The truth is that lone voice. The smallest bit of misinformation to muddy the waters is all it takes in order for truth to become harder to find. This same crafty strategy occurred in the Garden of Eden when the serpent convinced Eve through the manipulation of truth that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was acceptable to eat.
Notably, prior to the fall of mankind the lone voice of truth was God. In Genesis 1:1 of the King James Version it reminds us that, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Holy Bible 1997). This is God announcing He is the author of the Bible, and the Creator of all things. This also establishes the two separate entities of Heaven and Earth. Furthermore, the fall of mankind in Genesis chapters two and three are placed there by the Lord for us to understand how He works, and how Satan works. Genesis 2:16-17 of the King James Version declares, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Holy Bible ).
Furthermore, Genesis 3:1-6 of the King James Version reports:
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. (Holy Bible )
With attention to truth, we can see that once another party proclaimed an altered version of what God had commanded confusion dominated the decision making process. To be clear, once the serpent was able to convince Adam and Eve to use their own free will, God’s truth was replaced with the serpent’s lie. As a result, we learn that when their faith slipped away from the focus of God in the Garden of Eden, and towards their own logic that they became aware of sin. This awareness enhanced the feeling of shame along with blame when confronted by God. Genesis 3:12-13 of the King James Version reads, “And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat” (Holy Bible ). In detail, yet again there are now different parties accusing one another because truth was polluted. Additionally, the contaminated truth created a discombobulated arena in order for proper accuracy to be established.
By all means, the tactics of the Satan have not changed since He tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Consequently, the humanistic ethics in this world are actually flaws that tug at the free will of mankind with the intention of creating a wedge between us and the Lord. Naturally, it is our fear of the unknown, and how uncontrollable it is that works in combination with the fall of mankind in Genesis 2-3 that makes us unable to properly discern truth. God wants us to focus on His ideologies in order to obtain a strong mind, and better grasp His steadfast truth. Therefore, it is this writer’s contention that, we are to look to the life of Jesus to begin our search of truth regarding anything in this world. John 18:36 of the King James Version says, “Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.” (Holy Bible 1997) Since we know that we are born into a world of sin, the ethical principles of Satan battle the heavenly precepts of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, it is incumbent upon us to proceed with caution, and move forward with only God’s help so that we can seize the day for His glory. We can show others God is truth. John 14:6 of the King James Version explains, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (Holy Bible ).
Correspondingly, life can be complicated here on earth, and so stressful that we often forget where we are, and who our Father is. The Lord is our Father and Creator! He is our true self identity because He is in us all, and we are created after His image. John 15:5 the King James Version states, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” (Holy Bible , 1997) To repeat, John is inspired by God to tell us who we are as human beings in Him. Again, the beginning of the verse announces, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (Holy Bible , 1997). We are branches under Christ. Anything that we allow to grow in between the branches represents deceitful weeds that strangle our relationship with Him. These weeds conceal truth.
Given these points, a strong argument can be made that, the world today is establishing a vine of their own, the Social Credit System.
Amy Webb observes:
There are 58 countries that are starting to plug into China’s vision of artificial intelligence. Which means effectively that China is in the process of raising a Bamboo Curtain; one that does not need to—one that is sort of all encompassing; that has shared resources; shared telecommunications systems; shared infrastructure; shared digital systems; even shared mobile phone technologies. That is quickly going up all around the world to the exclusion of us in the West. (PBS Frontline- In the Age of AI – Transcript)
Undoubtedly, technology is establishing that the world is being dominated by to two computer driven superpowers through advancing the SCS. Moreover, a plethora of algorithmic bans happen repeatedly across all social media platforms on a daily basis. Controlling information is the manipulation of verity. The canard that the serpent told Adam and Eve began with the subtle command of information that obfuscated truth. We need to stand with God’s vine. We are His branches, and we grow freely from His truth alone. As the SCS further entrenches itself in our daily lives we must remember the armor of God. Ephesians 6:12-13 of the King James Version asserts, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Holy Bible ). Be blessed.
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