MIT Project "Gaydar" Shakes Privacy Assumptions

theodp writes "At MIT, an experiment that identifies which students are gay is raising new questions about online privacy. Using data from Facebook, two students in an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person's online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. The project, given the name 'Gaydar' by the students, is part of the fast-moving field of social network analysis, which examines what the connections between people can tell us, from predicting who might be a terrorist to the likelihood a person is happy, fat, liberal, or conservative." MIT professor Hal Abelson, who co-taught the course, is quoted: "That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information — because you don't have control over your information."

Comments

I'll bite

[Shivetya]

Why not make "gaydar"? Really, where is the offense? Oh, that's right, "gays" are a favorite of the politically correct crowd. Your reference to "white-dar" makes it clear either your offended or want to be offended. Get over it. Its far easier to turn the other cheek than look for offense in every comment or action.

Look, I think the students proved their point. It may never had been noticed if it had not offended. Why is it the fault of the authors if someone is trying to hide a major facet of who they are? If that person is embarrassed then its their problem, not yours, mine, or the authors. The interesting part is, people go to great extents to be heard, to declare who they are, and that occurs even on a subconscious level.

Facebook/Myspace/etc all show that as a society we want people to know who we are. This just shows that you may be revealing more than you expected.