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Unfriend the Deadbeats
Of course your friends matter to you. If they did, they wouldn’t be your friends. On Facebook, though, the concept of “friend” gets stretched pretty thin. That’s going to be a problem in the future, because your friends will also matter to potential creditors.
From The Inquisitor, we learn that “[Facebook] last month defended a patent acquired while purchasing a company that could be used to evaluate a person’s loan application based on the credit of his or her friends.” This is how it would work, apparently:
University of Maryland business professor Siva Viswanathan has looked into how “soft information” — like social contacts — can augment hard information like credit history to help lenders make better decisions. In his studies, this “soft information” has proven valuable … “We were surprised,” Viswanathan says. “Online was not perfect, but having the information did allow better [lending] decisions. The question remains how much better.” He also believes it’s quite possible that if social networks are adapted for predictive analytics in lending, people will alter their behavior online.
In other words, you might end up wanting to un-friend the deadbeats and the folks who seem like credits risks. You might run FICO checks on people yourself, before you add them to your Facebook friends.
Which sort of changes the idea of “friend,” doesn’t it? But then, Facebook already did that, irrevocably, didn’t it?
Published in Culture
Oh . . . no. Most of my FB friends are actors.
I’m never gonna own a house. Ever.
That’s okay. Relatively few people actually own houses. Most own mortgages.
I have purchased three houses over 35+ years and never owned one of them. Only the mortgage. I am hoping, before I die, to pay off the mortgage on the one I am in so I can actually own the house I live in.
Seawriter
I notice I’ve become more liberal lately in my unfriending.
And I’ve noticed that it’s only my more liberal friends who tend to unfriend me.
Just another reason to not be on Facebook.
Fair warning to all Ricochetti: defriend me. I have a terrible credit score due to delinquency in student loan payments.
Never been on Facebook and now probably never will.
I’m not on Facebook, so I guess I don’t have any friends.
Unless there’s another definition of the word ‘friend,’ that I’m missing, here.
Oh, wait . . .
I am going to Facebook-unfriend my true sincere friends who have middling credit scores; and keep those rich bastards that I barely know or like.
As long as they are not writers, you should be fine.
Lucky — me and Trump are like this. It’s gonna be great.
a.k.a., building in the infrastructure to provide loans only to good socialists. Once the machine is built, the value of the individual variables is a matter of arbitrary selection.
An uncomfortably large number of them have added “writer/producer” to their bios, of late.
Also a popular addition – – “Life Coach.”
I’m toast.
Me too. Mostly it has been of people whom I’ve not seen in 20+ years anyway (high school), who got all offended that I post conservative political stuff. I want to tell them that there was a probably a good reason I did’t seek them out for 2 decades.
Not me. I troll my lib friends with conservative and libertarian propaganda. My goal is to make them so disgusted with me that they unfriend me and never talk to me again. I want to be the person least likely to be asked back to their high school reunion.
But you are on Ricochet. And when they start checking your friends’ RINO scores…
In my case it’s jerks and passive aggressive moralizers. Lots of those among conservatives too, I’m finding.
In other places I’ve seen articles that claim if you don’t have social media accounts, you are also judged harshly, so it seems no win.
Rob, is this a warning that you are thinking about monetizing Ricochet? Selling our likes and friends to a bank for a little bit of $$$ in your pocket?
Just ’cause he’s a squish doesn’t mean he’s lacking in personal financial acumen.
He is a capitalist. A capitalist in need of $$$ if the urgency of his sales pitch on the podcasts are any indication. This is a way to make $$$.
Rob Long:
From The Inquisitor, we learn that “[Facebook] last month defended a patent acquired while purchasing a company that could be used to evaluate a person’s loan application based on the credit of his or her friends.”
Wait a minute, someone else could apply for a credit card or a loan and my credit could be checked? Is that even legal?
Privacy settings, people. Privacy settings.
This is not just a Facebook thing, I am working with a bank right now that is adopting the same models as used by the burgeoning internet based lenders like Prosper, Kabbage and many other. These are the lenders you hear advertising on the radio for small loans under $50,000. Their research is telling them that this “soft information” is a better indicator of the borrowers ability to repay and it costs them less than traditional information.
As Rob points out think about the dynamic that could take place if and when people realize the impact of social networks on their credit worthiness. Here is my new business idea pitch:
Imagine an ad on TV a few years from now for a service similar to those like Credit Karma which seek to help you improve your credit score. This new service is focused on helping people improve their credit by monitoring their social networks and altering them to friends that are deadbeats so they can un-friend or un-link them solely to improve their own credit rating. And for few dollars more a month advising them on new connections they should make with people who are good credit risks to boost their own credit rating.
If you start that kind of service and you make a buck or two just remember you got the idea here on Ricochet and kick back some money to keep the site going.
Well, my value as a FB friend just quadrupled, since I am a good risk. Too bad my loser acquaintances will never find me on FB.
As Whiskey says, “Privacy Settings…”
As for the definition of friends, everyone knows who their friends on FB are: they cut and paste posts, they do NOT share. (heheheh)