Alternative Data, Credit Scoring, and Financial Freedom

Episode Summary

Tamara K. Nopper’s talk at Future Perfect explains how credit agencies such as FICO use narratives of credit as personal responsibility to justify increased data surveillance of consumers. Reasoning that sources of “alternative data” such as social network usage are a response to discriminatory practices, these agencies are selling financial freedom at the cost of racial injustice. Future Perfect is a gathering at Data & Society that brings together individuals from a variety of world-building disciplines (from art and fiction to architecture and science) to explore the uses, abuses, and paradoxes of speculative futures. Tamara K. Nopper has a PhD in Sociology and her teaching and research focuses on the intersection of economic, racial, and gender inequality, with a particular emphasis on entrepreneurship, banking, globalization, urban development, and money and surveillance. Her publications have examined immigrant entrepreneurship, minority business development, the globalization of ethnic banking, and Asian American communities. Her current work looks at Korean immigrant entrepreneurship and post-Civil Rights era minority politics.

Episode Notes