It's also not great that the lady they report as pro social credit is only revealed later on in the piece as being married to a high ranking party member. She's introduced as "a marketing professional" when I'd argue the most relevant facts towards her support/non-support of such a system would be that she is married to "a civil servant in the justice department, a loyal cadre to the party."

The article makes several strange emotional appeals regarding her, actually. For instance, I'm glad she "married for love", but I don't see why it would be relevant to the issue at hand unless it was an attempt to further humanize her and, by extension, this new Permanent Spotlight system.

They're just making the point that she didn't marry him for his social credit score, even though he happens to have a high score under the system.

To quote the article immediately prior to that section:

"Who your friends and family are will affect your score. If your best friend or your dad says something negative about the government, you’ll lose points too. Who you date and ultimately partner with will also affect social credit."

It seems like your social credit score is positioned as your key to happiness. Better not get a bad one or associate with anyone who did. Better not wreck your child's future by saying something bad about the government.

Yes, that makes sense. I still hold that the deliberate omission of her party relationship until later in the article is to initially position her as a third party positive voice who happens to support the system.

And yes, the network affects are particularly awful.

"China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4B citizens"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18026060

They aren't even waiting 24 hours.

"China's Dystopian Social Credit System"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036768

less than 24 hours later.

Is it better to fear the State or your fellow citizens?

The Black Mirror episode, btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

The one that you'll get, which is that due to the opacity of the system, it presents itself as one in which everyone rates each other, but in fact the government or other control mechanism nominally different from but ultimately indistinguishable from the government has a heavy hand in both the ability to manipulate the judgment and the ability to manipulate the seeds of who is successful and thus has high ratings. It presents itself as fair and all egalitarian and makes it seem like anything that goes wrong is your friend's fault or something, but is in fact strictly controlled.