In an article by Aviva Rutkin (NewScientist, 12 November 2016, paywall) exploring the some tentative schemes for using Big Data, she begins with a relatively innocuous scheme to discount car insurance for first time buyers if the buyers will give the insurer (Admiral Insurance) access to their Facebook profile, known as firstcarquote. It was aborted before it ever made it out of the corral. But then comes this doozy:
Facebook itself may even be interested in finding ways to score users: it has already worked on theoretical projects that aren’t too different from firstcarquote. Last year, for example, Facebook patented an “authorisation and authentication” method that could allocate loans according to the credit scores of your Facebook friends. If their average score is above a certain threshold, your loan application will be processed; if not, you’re out of luck.
Can you imagine the churn as people begin to upgrade their “friends” list to better their chance to get a loan? And then dump those friends who might drag them down? I’m envisioning the development of Facebook ghettos, schisms widening between those with good credit scores and those without. First we were sliced by our political views, then diced by our credit needs.
On the bright side, it may result in more people learning to live without credit, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the individual, although some industries would hate it. (Now I’m visualizing the Wicked Witch screaming about the solvent qualities of anti-credit. I’m a little short on sleep.)
In the end, Facebook might try to compensate by examining your former friends and trying to factor them in, but it sounds like a short term fix to me. While Facebook is too big to be destroyed by any single mistake, if they were to take a step like this, one of their walls would start to crumble.
