Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Social Credit System" in English language version.
The biggest disconnect is around the notion of scores. Some commentators seem to imagine that a magic algorithm draws from AI cameras and internet surveillance all over the country to calculate a score that determines everyone's place in society. In reality, the SoCS is not the techno-dystopian nightmare we fear: it is lowly digitalized, highly fragmented, and primarily focuses on businesses. Most importantly, such a score simply does not exist.
In fact, Alibaba's Sesame Credit has become so ubiquitous that is often conflated with the Social Credit System and has strongly contributed to the notion that a unified scoring system exists.