China’s ‘citizen scores’ system gets people barred from flights – just like Black Mirror

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Remember that episode of Black Mirror that kicked off season 3 – the bit where the main character, Lacie Pound, can’t get a standby seat for a replacement flight because her social credit score is just below 4.2?

Netflix’s Black Mirror. GIF credit: Tech in Asia.

That’s the beginning of a series of unfortunate events (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it) as Lacie tries desperately to get to her friend’s wedding to schmooze with the high-ranking folks in attendance who can raise her score to the hallowed heights of 4.5.

Netflix’s Black Mirror. GIF credit: Tech in Asia.

It turns out that 4.9 million people in China are now in a similar situation after the nation’s controversial Social Credit System barred them from flights as punishment for very poor credit from outstanding debts. In addition, 1.65 million cannot take trains – ticket purchases require identification – due to their credit defaults, the China News Service reported today.

In a related development, China’s top online shopping company, Alibaba, has “restricted 511,000 discredited consumers’ overdrawing behavior” on the company’s online loans service, says the news agency.

“It’s incredibly sinister,” said Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker last month in reference to the Chinese scoring system, which was first outlined in detail last year.

“Am I right in thinking that your ranking is affected by your friends, so if you hang with the wrong crowd, your social ranking will go down? Wow. It’s completely mental.”

In reality, China’s system is not as transparent – and possibly even more sinister – than the one in Black Mirror, giving corporations control over people’s freedom of movement. It might even monitor one’s social media for dissenting opinions. The system will eventually cover “administrative affairs, commercial activities, social behaviors, and the judicial system,” said state news agency Xinhua.

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Facebook Now Lets You Set the Initial View on 360-Degree Photos

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Facebook updated the experience of sharing 360-degree photos with other users. Specifically, users can now change the initial view on their 360 photos on iOS, Android and Chrome on desktop.

With this update, when a user uploads a 360 photo on mobile, they can now drag their finger to set the initial view for the photo. This will be the view that other users will see before they access the full 360 photo. On desktop, users can click the edit button and move the mouse to set the initial view.

In addition, in a post on the Facebook 360 Community group page, Caitlin Ramrakha, product marketing manager at Facebook, previewed two additional changes coming to 360 photos on Facebook:

Secondly, we’ve also heard many of you ask for album support, and we’ll be rolling out the ability to post 360 photos to albums in the coming weeks. Alongside this update, we’ll also roll out the ability to add 360 photos to multimedia posts—i.e., when you want to post a combination of 360 photos, regular photos, 360 videos and regular videos at once.

Readers: Do you share 360 photos on Facebook?

Users pissed as Alipay starts charging for money transfers (UPDATED)

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Ant Financial’s mobile wallet app Alipay.

UPDATE 9/13: Updated to clarify how Alipay’s $3,000 exception works.

Well, it couldn’t last forever.

Almost exactly a year after Tencent made a similar move with WeChat Pay, Alibaba’s Alipay has announced that beginning in October, the service will charge a 0.1 percent fee for transfers from Alipay to personal bank accounts.

Alipay is used as a mobile wallet app by hundreds of millions of people in China.

The new fee won’t apply to all transfers – there’s an exception for transfers whose “accumulated sum” is under US$3,000, but once users exceed that number, all future transfers to an account will be subject to the fees. That’s a bit different from Tencent’s WeChat Pay, which levies a fee on bank transfers that exceed US$3,000 per month. However, Alipay users can raise the US$3,000 lifetime quota by earning points for using Alipay services (like paying for things offline).

The new fees go live on October 12, so users who don’t want to fall victim do have some time to get money out of their Alipay accounts at no cost. (It’s also worth pointing out that the withdrawal fees won’t apply to Taobao merchants or to withdrawals from Yu’ebao money market accounts).

People not happy

People were pretty upset about the new WeChat fees last year, and the response to this year’s new Alipay fees has been similar. A Sina Tech article on the change, for example, has attracted thousands of comments, and the most popular comments are all negative or deeply cynical.

Millions of people are already in the habit of using Alipay.

“I don’t understand,” wrote a Zhejiang commenter who’s received nearly 2,000 upvotes, “so many people put so much of their money into Alipay, even though investing it could make more money, basically lending it interest-free to Alibaba. Then Alipay turns around and wants to charge fees!”

Alipay’s explanation for the added fees is that its own operational costs have gone up, but users don’t all buy it. A more popular explanation (via a Guangdong commenter with 1,200 upvotes): “This is called fattening the pig and then slaughtering it.” Another very popular comment chose the exact same metaphor; the implication is that Alipay got users to deposit lots of money by being fee-free, and now intends to cash in on that by charging this fee on users who want to take the money back out.

Some users have decided to take a stand: “If it’s like this, then I won’t use Alipay anymore,” wrote a Shandong commenter who has 1,800 upvotes.

Other users aren’t worried. “You fools! I don’t have US$3,000,” wrote a Fujian commenter, “so I’ve got time to write this comment and don’t need to rush off to transfer funds.”

Despite all the user anger, the ultimate fallout is likely to be minimal. A 0.1 percent fee is quite small, and millions of people are already in the habit of using Alipay. And with Alipay’s chief competitor WeChat already levying a very similar fee, there’s no obvious alternative for disgruntled Alipay users to turn to anyway.

This post Users pissed as Alipay starts charging for money transfers (UPDATED) appeared first on Tech in Asia.