Facebook Patent Might Be Able To Tell Your Socioeconomic Status

Salary can be a rather sensitive topic which is why people usually do not publicly disclose their salaries unless during an interview or when applying for a loan. However it seems that in the future you might not even need to disclose your income because Facebook will be able to figure it out on their own.

This is according a recently discovered patent that was filed back on the 27th of July, 2016. According to the patent, it describes an algorithm that will use a bunch of data uploaded by the user to determine their socioeconomic status, such as your education, homeownership, internet usage, and more.

Based on this information that you might have uploaded voluntarily, such as through photos, check-ins, status updates, and more, Facebook’s algorithm could then determine your class, such as working class, middle class, and upper class. The goal of this patent is apparently to better help deliver ads that would target your class. For example if someone is of the working class, an ad about luxury cars might not have that much of an impact.

We’re sure that there are probably some who aren’t too comfortable with Facebook using algorithms to determine their status in life and society, although to be fair we don’t know if Facebook actually has plans to put it into action.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Facebook, patents