Ant Financial, the internet finance behemoth controlled by billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma, has apologized for roping unsuspecting users into its fledgling but fast-growing credit-score system.
Ant Financial’s Alipay kicked off a free service this week to help users generate a consumption profile based on their shopping history. But buried at the bottom of its landing page was a small box -- checked by default -- that automatically enrolled users to its Sesame Credit unless they opted out. The subsequent online uproar prompted Ant to change that setting and to call the move “extremely idiotic,” according to a post on its official social media account.
Chinese Government on "Social Credit" scoring
Our country is in a crucial period of economic and social transformation. Interest subjects are becoming more pluralized, various social contradictions are prominent, and social organizations and management methods are seeing profound change. Completely moving the construction of a social credit system forward is an effective method to strengthen social sincerity, stimulate mutual trust in society, and reducing social contradictions, and is an urgent requirement for strengthening and innovating social governance, and building a Socialist harmonious society.
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Strengthen rewards and incentives for subjects to keep trust. Expand rewards and propaganda strength for trust-keeping acts. Grant rewards to enterprises and model individuals keeping trust according to regulations, broadly propagate them through news media, and forge a public opinion environment that trust-keeping is glorious.
Submitted January 04, 2018 at 06:09AM by JustAsIgnorantAsYou http://ift.tt/2CR01zs
