I've known about sesame since last year at least - it's getting more attention now but it was definitely public knowledge when this series would have been at the writing stage.

It's an idea from sci-fi - I can't remember who wrote what, but there was a society where citizens got more or fewer votes depending on their behaviour (edit: Alastair Reynolds? Banks? Feels like it was one of them.), and knew each other's scores, and Tom Disch's 334 is explicitly about scoring people, and one segment is dedicated to "Baz" desperately trying to get his score up by producing a piece of state-loving prose, before narrowly failing and being consigned to life as a faceless "g[ue|o]rilla" soldier - although in that the state scored you, not other people.