China Ecommerce Giant Unveils Apps to
Track "Green" Social Credit Scores to Monitor All Aspects of Your Life
at World Economic Forum
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland ,
Alibaba Holdings President J. Michael Evans unveiled their plans to
launch an app that could track an individual user's "carbon footprint."
"We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to
measure their own carbon footprint.
What does that mean? That’s where
are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what
are they consuming on our platform. So: An individual carbon footprint
tracker."
As Kit Knightly reports at Off-Guardian, this is HUGE news as Alibaba is
the second largest ecommerce company in the world, second only to
Amazon.com, with revenues in excess of 715 billion Yuan in 2021 (that’s
over 110 billion USD).
And they’re not just an e-commerce platform. Through their financial and
technological service companies, Alibaba runs the largest domain name
market, email provider and cloud storage services in China, and the
largest payment platform in the world.
Through Alihealth they supply online pharmacy services, as well as
providing computer technology to hospitals and clinics. Since they
bought AutoNavi in 2014, they own the biggest e-map navigation company
in China too.
Essentially, in China if you want to pay for something on the internet,
you probably use Alibaba. If you want to order something online from a
small business, you probably use Alibaba. If you want to sell your stuff
second hand, you probably use Alibaba.
If you want to register a domain, go to a pharmacy, check into a
hospital, send an email, use a map or GPS…you get the idea.
How long before Alibaba decides to “reward” other “correct choices” that
have nothing to do with the environment? Like vaccination, for example.
How long after that do they start punishing incorrect choices?
They already technically have access to the data they would need to
construct this system. It would be naïve in the extreme to not see where
this leads.
And, of course, it won’t just be China. If Alibaba is doing this then
Google, Amazon, Apple and all the rest of them won’t be far behind.