What is the basic premise of the Black Mirror episode Nosedive, and how does its rating system work as social control?

Every personal interaction is rated on a five-star scale, as on Yelp or TripAdvisor, and the average decides access to housing, credit, jobs, flights and services. Conform and you are rewarded; deviate and you are blacklisted. It works as a digital panopticon, where the possibility of being punished for anything makes people regulate their own behaviour.

The question the episode asks: what if the principles of social interaction on platforms like Yelp, Instagram, Facebook or TripAdvisor were radically integrated into society? Unlike other episodes with speculative tech (robot dogs, neural implants), the technology here is familiar: smartphones and social media.

The logic of the system: following the norms brings advantages. Breaking them can put you on a blacklist that decides whether airlines, hotels and restaurants serve you well, and can cost you better housing, loans or well-paid jobs. Such a social credit system can function as a structure for monitoring behaviour.

The panopticon: Jeremy Bentham's (1748–1832) design for a prison in which a guard in a central tower can see every cell but the prisoners cannot see whether they are being watched. Because they might be watched at any moment, they discipline themselves. Nosedive applies a digital version of this to the whole population.

Go deeper:

• Wikipedia: Nosedive (Black Mirror) — plot and reception of the episode.
• Wikipedia: Panopticon — Bentham's prison design and Foucault's reading of it.
• Wikipedia: Social Credit System — the real-world system the episode is often compared to.