US startups use social and behavioral data to score unbanked consumers’ creditworthiness.

Evidence

As the Wall Street Journal reports, new startups such as Affirm, LendUp, and ZestFinance “use data from sources such as social media, online behavior and data brokers to determine the creditworthiness of tens of thousands of U.S. consumers who don’t have access to loans,” more evidence that decision rights and the privacy they enable have become luxuries that too many people cannot afford. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 540

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Consumer credit judgement shifted from personal relationships to automated for-profit scoring — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 359