Some users of Yahoo Japan Corp are rising up against Japan’s biggest Web portal after the rollout of a new rating system that is being compared to a social-scoring initiative in China.
The 48 million people with a Yahoo Japan ID would have to opt out within a privacy settings Web page if they do not want to be rated.
The score is based on a variety of factors and is calculated based on inputs such as payment history, shopping reviews, whether a user canceled bookings and the amount of identifiable personal information.
Unless users opt out, their ratings may be accessible to freelance jobs site Crowdworks Inc, Yahoo’s bike-sharing service and other businesses.
Makoto Niida, a long-time Yahoo user, opted out of the rating system when he learned about it.
“It’s a big deal that the service was enabled by default,” Niida said. “The way they created services that benefit businesses without clear explanations to their users reminds me of China’s surveillance society.”
Yahoo’s new credit-score program follows efforts by Mizuho Financial Group Inc, NTT Docomo Inc and other companies to use algorithms to assign ratings to consumers.
Japan does not have a system similar to FICO in the US, so businesses in the world’s third-largest economy have come up with their own solutions to determine financial trustworthiness.
Yahoo’s program shares some elements with China’s Sesame Credit, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), according to Masahiko Shoji, a professor at Musashi University specializing in policy and governance issues.
“When China’s scoring system started, people said it was scary, but now they’re starting to realize that it’s being turned into a business in Japan,” Shoji said, adding that Yahoo makes it difficult for users to find where to opt out on its Web site.
Yahoo Japan officially launches the scoring service on July 1.
A pilot program with 13 companies provided high-scoring users with special offers and matched preferred freelancers to companies, Yahoo said in a statement on June 3.
Yahoo Japan, partly owned by Softbank Group Corp, said users consented to the program when they first registered their IDs, eliminating the need for opt ins.
Yahoo said it uses the score within its services, but would not share personal information without additional user consent.
“We are aware of the opinions on social media,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “We regret causing any concerns, and will work to improve our communication around this issue.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day