Hacker News Reader

Comment by jitix | Hacker News Reader

That episode's premise is probably the most plausible one in near future. Even if public services arent tied to such scores there's nothing preventing one private company to use a score from another private company to deny you service. I know this is how credit scores work currently in the US (which I find extremely strange and disturbing as an immigrant) but maintaining social scores is much more dangerous than credit scores.

View on HN

Probably less plausible than you think. What incentive would company X have in denying service to someone based on unrelated parameters? That's just going to reduce business and profits. With credit scores, its a bit different. Credit scores are a risk profile of the consumer, so if a company doesn't deny service/charge higher interest to a consumer with low credit scores, it potentially stands to loose money. Besides, this is regulated, using parameters like gender, age, race etc. in your underwriting model is still illegal, I think.

Any such score, used to deny service to group x based on parameters unrelated to the product itself would simply be discrimination, no?

(disclaimer I would never advocate for this in way shape or form)

With that out of the way in small businesses reputation can matter quite a lot. Informally many small businesses know that one guy/shop/service that is not worth having as a client. Regardless of discriminatory issues every client has varying levels of cost associated to doing business with them. So just like Credit Scores are a risk profile for how a person will handle debt. You could envision a subset of social scores as a risk profile on having someone as a business partner/client/provider based on metrics like support cost, likelihood of nickle and diming you, Contract negotiations gone wrong. That sort of thing.

Klout scores people like this already.

But I'm not sure if anyone still cares about Klout scores. I'm not sure if they ever did, except for fun.

Some people cared a lot. But they were the same sort of people who use terms like growth hacker and thought leader to describe themselves. I confess to having totally forgotten about Klout. I'm not sure I've heard them come up in years in discussing social media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com