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from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept.
We've got great news this week for nation-state employees tasked with using social media to spark a class war in previously stable democracies! Facebook is patenting technology to decide if its users are upper, middle or working class -- without even using the usual marker for social class: an individual's income (the patent considers this a benefit).
Facebook's patent plan for "Socioeconomic Group Classification Based on User Features" uses different data sources and qualifiers to determine whether a user is "working class," "middle class," or "upper class." It uses things like a user's home ownership status, education, number of gadgets owned, and how much they use the internet, among other factors. If you have one gadget and don't use the internet much, in Facebook's eyes you're probably a poor person.
Facebook's application says the algorithm is intended for use by "third parties to increase awareness about products or services to online system users." Examples given include corporations and charities.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:08PM
Historically that wasn't the case, it was SOURCE of income not level. So government and charity for lower class, wage employment W-2 mostly for middle class, and returns on capital ownership for upper.
Now practically speaking, you don't make much income off soup kitchen dinners, you can make a lot of money off owning things that appreciate in value or provide a return on investment, and the middle class wage slaves fell in the middle. So they're in order and there's not much overlap. But there was no law and an upper class individual without significant expenses that year merely avoided paying a long term capital gain on selling something, such that some upper class people often called "rich" sometimes have strangely low incomes.
In practice this isn't hard to figure out BTW. For example "tiger moms" of any race will push their children to do what they thought upper class people did when they were kids. Usually they're pretty far out of touch, so you get conspicuous consumption of ridiculous things, conspicuous consumption of leisure time by the standards of 1990. You can also run off attitudes toward Nouveau Riche celebrity types, lower class absolutely worships them, middle class is jealous, upper class generally can't stand them.
So for example a little google and some amazon work and attitude toward an item for sale like "Big Time Pimp Clock Medallion Necklace" pretty accurately defines your socioeconomic group. OMG that is so stylish I wish I could afford that implies lower class (its $13.71 BTW). I wish I was cool enough to wear that, but I'm not buying it, is solidly middle class. What the Fuck is this Shit is a solid upper class unironic response, other than buying it as a Halloween like prop for slumming with the lower classes which is sometimes seen by them ironically as fun.