> Ineligibility for universities for opaque reasons happens in the west too. So does unaccountable public shaming - I don't think it being done manually rather than automatically makes it better. Knowing what information companies have on you doesn't actually help any - it means you know the inputs to their model, but not how they relate to the output.

In the West, are those things engineered by the government on a mass scale to coerce political support for the regime and silence dissent?

No, on the whole. There is no grand conspiracy, just a lot of people looking for a quiet life, avoiding rocking the boat, and slightly favouring people like themselves. But the end result is almost the same.