It is terrifying, but for very different reasons than this soy boy reporter thinks.
In the future people will be able to snap a picture of you (or just look at you with a future equivalent of google glass), use facial recognition to know who you are, and instantly see everything you've ever said on social media, including things you have deleted. AI will find other accounts you've used thinking you were anonymous (by analyzing your typing style, times of day you posted, etc) and that info will too be visible to the general public. Tech companies will voluntarily give up data they've been collecting on you.
Unlike with what this chinese programmer is doing, the general public will wholeheartedly support this in the name of "public safety". Unlike in the past, you won't be able to just move to another area, change your name and get a fresh start. There will be nowhere to run. You'll walk into a store, a camera will see your face, the AI will see you made an edgy tweet from 2011, and you will be kicked out, and banned from every store owned by that corporation, both across the country and internationally.
In the future there will be a new class of untouchables. People who have been deemed guilty of wrongthink, and thus blacklisted from employment, services, banks, stores, pretty much everything you can imagine.
And if you think you're safe because you don't use social media, think again. ISPs and tech companies collect enough data to triangulate your identity, even if you're using a VPN, use opera, and only search with duckduckgo. And even IF that doesn't happen, you'll be treated with suspicion just for being an "unscannable"