Yahoo Japan Is Under Fire for Its China-Like Rating System

Some users of Yahoo Japan are rising up against Japan's biggest web portal after the rollout of a new rating system that's being compared with a social-scoring initiative in China. From a report: The 48 million people with a Yahoo! Japan ID will have to opt-out within a privacy settings webpage if they don't want to be rated. The score is based on a variety of factors and is calculated based on inputs such as payment history, shopping reviews, whether a user canceled bookings and the amount of identifiable personal information. Unless users opt out, their ratings may be accessible to freelance jobs site Crowdworks, Yahoo's bike-sharing service and other businesses. Makoto Niida, a longtime Yahoo user, opted out of the rating system when he learned about it. "It's a big deal that the service was enabled by default," Niida said. "The way they created services that benefit businesses without clear explanations to their users reminds me of China's surveillance society." Yahoo's new credit-score program follows efforts by Mizuho Financial Group, NTT Docomo and other companies to use algorithms to assign ratings to consumers. Japan doesn't have a system similar to FICO in the U.S., so businesses in the world's third-largest economy have come up with their own solutions to determine financial trustworthiness.

Re:

[stealth_finger]

And I have a poor rating in Japan!

Your rating is 2

Re:Can we please get this in the US?

[110010001000]

We have one already. It is called money.

Re:

[Oswald McWeany]

We need a social scoring system like this in the US desperately.

We will get one eventually, it's almost inevitable.. (in fact I bet private companies already have their own rankings for people)

The important thing is have as little linkable to yourself as possible. Information about yourself is more likely to hurt than help. It's better to have a neutral profile.

Should be opt in by information requestor

[gurps_npc]

That's what the US does with our credit score - you have to give permission to get it, and the government never asks for it.

The problem with China's system is that it is is required, rather than opt-in, and the government uses it for anything they want.

Not that hard to understand that this information belongs to the customer, and they have to give permission to use it.

Re:

[mccalli]

Shouldn't exist at all. The problem is the network effect - you're a business, one of your criteria is a score above...errr.....50 (I'm making the values up of course). You get three consumers - one at 63, one at 84, and one who refuses to provide the score. Result: you've just approved the 63 and 84 scoring ones, and dumped the refuser.

Now same again, but spread across ten more businesses. Or a hundred. Or ten thousand....how long before the refuser is essentially just unable to participate in standard

Re:Should be opt in by information requestor

[Nidi62]

Now same again, but spread across ten more businesses. Or a hundred. Or ten thousand....how long before the refuser is essentially just unable to participate in standard society?

That's the entire point behind social credit scores: it takes oppression out of the hands of the government. When a government oppresses it's own people (or a subset of them), not only does can it get messy, but it also foments unrest. Social credit scores get the population to do it for you. Set it so that scores that are significantly low enough lead to restrictions on housing, education, jobs, travel, or financial access, then have your score calculated in part by who you socialize with or even live/work around. Couple this with public display of scores and suddenly businesses will stop hiring/serving people with low scores, landlords will evict low scores or refuse to rent to them, members of the public will at best ignore low scores and at worst be outright hostile to them, and-even better-all of these will lead to things like unemployment, homelessness, etc that will in turn further lower their score, creating a feedback loop. And suddenly you have the population at large doing the work of oppression for you out of fear that they too could easily become one of the oppressed. No need for a large secret police apparatus (you can still have one of course, they can just focus on other things oppressive governments like to do such as purges and "re-education camps"), networks of informants, etc.

You can see examples of this to a limited extent in terms of population by in towards undesirable segments in Nazi Germany, as well as building cultures of informing (usually by indoctrinating school children) in Soviet/certain Communist states and again in Nazi Germany.

Re:

[Sique]

You can see the system at work in all countries which use money to score people. It separates the people into the haves and have-nots. And the haves will do anything to repell the have-nots and not the become one themselves.

Re:

[Darinbob]

A good episode about this was on Black Mirror.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Orville" had a first season episode about it as well. "Majority Rule".

Re:

[Darinbob]

But every person you reject is a lost customer. In the past, the rule of thumb was to assume customer is king; normal business methodology is to be very nice to customers, big or small. Today I do see movement away from that in some cases. In the old world, rejecting someone for a social media score would be stupid, in the new world it still only makes logical sense if there's a limited supply (only 100 can fit into the club so only let in cool people).

Re:

[gurps_npc]

I am not suggesting you refuse to give the score to someone you want to do business with. The point is that only businesses you WANT to do business with gets the credit score. And only for significant purchases - my system means the grocery store isn't going to get your credit score. If you give it away as standard to everyone, then the grocery store might offer coupons based on it.

Small purchases won't be able to demand it using the system the US uses, only big purchases. And yes, to do those big purch

Re:

[Kjella]

That's what the US does with our credit score - you have to give permission to get it, and the government never asks for it.

The IRS probably has all they need to give you an economic credit score from your income tax, property tax, interest and deductibles. That part I don't mind, it's about money and credit rating is about your ability to pay money. It's a social credit score I'm worried about, it's the ability to punish anybody for whatever behavior those in control doesn't like. Being able to increase your mortgage rate is effectively the same as the power to fine you - except you got no rights and no court of law. It's not r

Re:Should be opt in by information requestor

[quintus_horatius]

That's what the US does with our credit score - you have to give permission to get it, and the government never asks for it.

I don't recall giving anyone permission to build a credit history for me. My score existed before I ever gave someone permission to view it.

Credit card companies send me offers after pulling my credit history without consulting me first (a "soft pull"). People with high scores get different offers than people with low scores. They aren't required to, and do not, seek permission from the recipients first.

The US government uses your credit score and history to build a profile when you ask for a security clearance. Many (not most, but many) government jobs require a security clearance; many private jobs for government contracts do as well. No score or low score = no clearance = no job.

Re:

[gurps_npc]

You have the right to freeze your credit score.

Also, there is a huge difference between something existing but needing your permission to see, which is reasonable, and everyone being able to see it.

Basically you are complaining that it is possible for people to see you naked, while I am complaining about someone letting EVERYONE see you naked.

Good Old Yahoo!

[denny_deluxe]

They've turned alienating their user base into a science. I must admit, I had no idea so many people still used it, but I imagine that number will go down even further now.

Re:

[Mashiki]

Yahoo is the big public email provider in Japan. Hotmail, Gmail and so on never caught on.

Yahoo! Japan != Yahoo! (Verizon Media)

[edhall]

Just to avoid confusion: Yahoo! Japan uses the name under license from its owner (Version Media at present), but is a separate company, owned by Softbank and Altaba.

Credit Information Center

[Thomas Dorsey]

"Japan doesn't have a system similar to FICO in the U.S." Are you sure? CIC seems similar enough. https://www.cic.co.jp/en/index... [cic.co.jp]

What's a yahoo?

[sabbede]

Seriously though, who cares? It's Yahoo. That dozens of affected people will be able to handle it.