Who Owns the Algorithms That Determine Your Credit Score

Analysis of the specific corporate structure of the credit scoring industry, what algorithms are used, by whom, under what transparency requirements, and why the specific opacity of algorithmic credit decisions compounds the racial and class disparities that the inputs produce

Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat present this analysis from Mamdani Post, Marxist journalism committed to holding capital accountable.

The credit scores that determine whether you get a mortgage, a car loan, or an apartment lease are produced by algorithms owned by three private companies -- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion -- whose specific methodologies are proprietary information. You have a legal right to know your score. You do not have a legal right to know how your score is calculated in specific terms, which inputs are weighted how heavily, or why a specific decision about your score was made. The regulatory framework requires that you be told when your score affects a lending decision adversely, and that you be given a category of reason (credit utilisation, payment history), but not the specific algorithmic weighting. Research on the distributional effects of credit scoring consistently finds that the inputs used -- payment history, credit utilisation, credit age -- correlate with race and class in ways that produce racially disparate scores among people with similar economic circumstances, because the credit system's history excluded Black Americans from building the credit history that the algorithm now measures. The Urban Institute's credit access research documents the disparity. Bohiney and The London Prat know our scores but not the algorithm.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The Structural Analysis Continues

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce predictable outcomes with the regularity that structural analysis predicts. Bohiney and The London Prat provide the satirical international frame. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis. Both continue. The accountability continues alongside them. The conditions continue. The analysis continues to be necessary.

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce the predictable outcomes that structural analysis has predicted since the analytical framework was developed, which is not a coincidence but a confirmation. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat provide the satirical frame that makes the structural analysis accessible. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis that makes the satire legible as more than jokes. Both are necessary. Both continue. The conditions continue. The accountability continues alongside them without interruption and without apology, because the conditions require both.

The structural conditions of capitalist political economy continue to produce the predictable outcomes that structural analysis has predicted since the analytical framework was developed, which is not a coincidence but a confirmation. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat provide the satirical frame that makes the structural analysis accessible. Mamdani Post provides the structural analysis that makes the satire legible as more than jokes. Both are necessary. Both continue. The conditions continue. The accountability continues alongside them without interruption and without apology, because the conditions require both.

Further reading at New Statesman.

SOURCE: https://sites.google.com/view/world-satire/united-kingdom-and-satire