Your Facebook posts could tell Mark Zuckerberg how rich you are thanks to new wealth algorithm
FACEBOOK has invented an algorithm that can guess how rich or poor you are based on your profile info.
The company would snoop on details like your travel history and household data to work out which “socioeconomic group” you would fit in.
The feature would take advantage of the huge amounts of private info Facebook holds on you, if you’re a user.
Facebook filed the idea as a patent back in 2016, but the invasive tool only became public knowledge in early February – when the patent was published.
The algorithm starts by working out how old you are, based on the birth date you entered into Facebook when you signed up.
It would then probe deeper, looking at:
- How many internet-connected devices you use to log into Facebook
- Whether you own your own home
- What your highest level of education is
- What city your house is in
- Where (and how often) you travel
- What job you do
Once Facebook’s algorithm has been fed all of this data, it would then work out roughly how much money you might be earning.
Then, it would use that estimated salary to work out whether you might be working class, middle-class, or a rich-list millionaire.
Facebook says that it could use this patented technology to give information to “third parties, to increase awareness about products or services to online users”.
That basically means it would be an advertising tool designed to help companies that pay Facebook for ad space in your News Feed to better target their advertisements.
But the fact that the algorithm is just a patent means that there’s no way of telling when (or even if) Facebook will ever roll this technology out.
We spoke to a top analyst from research firm GBH Insights, who explained that there’s a good chance this tech will never see the light of day.
“We see Facebook as unlikely to roll this out to the platform, although this data – in some form – is important for advertisers,” expert Daniel Ives told The Sun.
We’ve asked Facebook for comment and will update this article with any response.