Did Black Mirror: Nosedive come true?
The single public score for every person never arrived, in China or anywhere else. But nearly everything that score does in the episode, from grounding travellers to pricing people out of homes and cutting off service, is now done by separate, mostly hidden ratings and blacklists.
Read the review · 7.1/10 →
How this P(n) was calculated
Each prediction is weighted 1–5 by how pivotal it is to the story: 5 is the core premise, 1 is background detail. Arrived scores 1, arriving 0.5, everything else 0. P(n) is the weighted points divided by the total weight.
| Claim | Prediction · why this weight | Weight | Status | Value | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOSEDIVE-1 | Every person carries a single public rating, given by other people after everyday interactions, that is visible to strangers and shapes their social standing. Core premise: the universal public rating is the episode's world and Lacie's whole problem. |
5 | DIVERGED | 0 | 0 |
| NOSEDIVE-2 | A low rating from the people you deal with can get you cut off from an everyday service. Texture: the car-rental refusal is one obstacle on Lacie's road trip. |
2 | ARRIVED | 1 | 2 |
| NOSEDIVE-3 | People with a poor record in a rating system are refused plane or train tickets. Supporting: the airport refusal is a turning point that sends Lacie's journey off the rails. |
3 | ARRIVED | 1 | 3 |
| NOSEDIVE-4 | An opaque score decides whether you can rent the home you want. Major: the Pelican Cove discount is why Lacie chases a 4.5 at all. |
4 | ARRIVED | 1 | 4 |
| Total | 14 | 9 |
P(n) = 9 ÷ 14 = 64% · unweighted average 75%
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NOSEDIVE-1
Every person carries a single public rating, given by other people after everyday interactions, that is visible to strangers and shapes their social standing.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: the universal public rating is the episode's world and Lacie's whole problem.
No country or platform runs a universal, public, peer-given score for individuals. China's social credit system, the usual comparison, has no central score for individuals and mostly targets companies. The one consumer attempt at a Yelp for people, Peeple, met a wave of public disgust before it launched. Scoring went private and fragmented instead. 123
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NOSEDIVE-2
A low rating from the people you deal with can get you cut off from an everyday service.
Weight 2/5 · Texture: the car-rental refusal is one obstacle on Lacie's road trip.
Ride-hailing made this routine. In 2019 Uber said riders with ratings significantly below average could lose access to the app, adding passengers to the rating regime drivers already lived under. The threshold isn't published, which is the main difference from the episode's visible number. 45
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NOSEDIVE-3
People with a poor record in a rating system are refused plane or train tickets.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the airport refusal is a turning point that sends Lacie's journey off the rails.
China's blacklists, mostly tied to unpaid debts, fines and court judgments, blocked millions of plane and train ticket purchases in 2018. The mechanism is a state blacklist rather than a crowd-sourced score, but the scene at the airport desk is real. 67
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NOSEDIVE-4
An opaque score decides whether you can rent the home you want.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the Pelican Cove discount is why Lacie chases a 4.5 at all.
Algorithmic tenant-screening scores are sold to landlords and used to accept or reject applicants. In spring 2021 Mary Louis, a voucher holder with 16 years of on-time rent references, was turned down for a Massachusetts flat on the strength of one; the class action that followed settled in 2024, with SafeRent agreeing to stop scoring voucher holders but admitting no fault. The applicant usually never sees the number. 89
- AGAINST China just announced a new social credit law. Here's what it says.. MIT Technology Review, 2022-11-22. Reports there is no central social credit score for individuals and that the national system focuses on companies.
- AGAINST China's Orwellian social credit score isn't real. Brookings, 2018-11-19. Argues there is no national social credit score; scores exist only in some local pilots and private loyalty-style programmes.
- CONTEXT Yelp-style app Peeple will let you rate others' social skills. ABC7 Los Angeles, 2015-10-01. The closest consumer attempt at rating people drew an immediate backlash over consent and harassment.
- FOR Uber To Start Banning Riders With Low Ratings. NPR, 2019-05-29. Uber says riders with ratings significantly below average may lose access to the app after warnings.
- FOR Uber will now deactivate riders with 'significantly below average' ratings. PhillyVoice, 2019-05-29. Quotes Uber saying drivers 'have long been expected to meet a minimum rating threshold'; riders now face the same.
- FOR China's 'Social Credit' Used to Ban 23M From Traveling. Fortune, 2019-02-22. Citing China's National Public Credit Information Center: 17.5 million flight and 5.5 million train ticket purchases blocked in 2018.
- CONTEXT China's social credit score – untangling myth from reality. MERICS, 2022-02-11. Describes the real system as fragmented and mainly aimed at businesses, not a single personal score.
- FOR Class Action Lawsuit on AI-Related Discrimination Reaches Final Settlement. Insurance Journal, 2024-11-25. A screening score got Mary Louis rejected for a flat in 2021 despite 16 years of references; the appeal failed.
- AGAINST $2.28M Settlement Against SafeRent Reached. Cohen Milstein, 2024-04-30. Fair-housing litigation forced changes to how the score is used, showing these systems can be challenged.
Ledger updated 1 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method