The Black Mirror episode with the social scoring app is brilliant, and basically accurate.

Social scoring seems almost inevitable… We have siloed microcosms of it already. Businesses frequently have a Trustpilot score, food outlets have a visible hygiene rating score, Uber users have a behaviour based score, and we all have a credit rating.

China, when it decides to do something, does it. Be it landing on the dark side of the moon or micro managing citizens with the mother of all apps.

Next year, apparently, all citizens will be given an ID number and a corresponding ‘life record’. From what we understand, this will score them on an ever increasing number of social, commercial, and private activities. The social score will impact peoples ability to borrow money, travel, find and keep jobs, will seemingly enable people to report on others for anti social behaviour.

This is a strange, strange path to take. It’s certainly counter to individuality and in some ways it reminds me of ants in a colony maintaining order.

Will it be compulsory? Probably. A total surveillance state, ever increasing in reach and knowledge of its citizens, where conformity is the only way to survive.

Is this the World we want?

And here’s how it ends…

And here’s the analysis of it: