Black Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre: Is social media the future of car insurance?

A multinational company with thousands of employees and a turnover of more than £2 billion in 2015 requests access to young customers’ private social media history to predict their likely future behavior. While this might sound like the basis for an episode of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian TV series Black Mirror, it’s actually a real plan formulated by insurance provider Admiral to create more accurate quotes for young drivers. The initiative, aptly named firstcarquote, was intended to examine a user’s Facebook presence -- including the pages they like and the content they post -- to identify key personality traits. These traits,… [Continue Reading]