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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."
"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."
I have control over my information. And that is why you wont find be on Facebook.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Friend Everyone...
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
I am really curious if it thinks I'm gay (does it consider bisexuality?). Also, this could be useful as a dating tool; if you don't know if the object of your affections is gay or not, run them through MIT Gaydar, and then possibly feel more secure about asking them out.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
From the article:
I once wrote a computer program that predicted coin tosses. I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure that if I had tossed a coin that the predictions would have been accurate.
Should be: MIT Project "Gaydar" Shakes Privacy Assumptions of Stupid Twats Who Still Won't Care
You mean if people can view your social networks on facebook they can deduce some basic facts about you? Shocking! People really need to think about the compromise that they are making when they make their FB profiles and info visible to anyone but their immediate friends. It's ok if you want to do it, but just realize what you are doing.
Being on a social network site at all exposes you a lot. I decided I didn't give a crap, but I have everything set to 'friends only' and I don't use apps or quizzes. Reasonable compromise for a non-tin-foil-hatter.
I just hope they don't invent a virgin-radar.
There are a couple of fields of personal data in facebook which state your marital status, and whether you are looking for a man or woman. It might just be possible from analyzing these details, which way you swing.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Likewise, if twenty-five of your thirty Facebook friends are gay and of the opposite gender as you, they conclude you're probably single.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
A computer fed with a few hundred megabytes of personal data can now determine in minutes what most of us in the life know as soon as we see the person. I should be impressed, except I'm totally not. Don't worry about this ever becoming popular though -- sooner or later someone will feed the program a list of US senators and then magically the next day all traces of the program, its authors, and the results will be declared illegal and the arrests will begin -- effective last tuesday.
More seriously, the problem isn't that people may be able to infer a person's sexual orientation -- it's the fact that this society still refuses to label those who use this type of information to slander, attack, and in some cases kill, other people. Our transparent society has brought a lot of social issues right out in the open where everyone can see them. And we can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the injustices perpetuated by one group onto another. This, fundamentally, is what the fight over privacy is about: It's not what we are (or are not) that matters, but rather the correlations between those facts and the social meanings and messages attached to them. The fight for privacy is really founded upon the belief that the average person is insecure, full of prejudice and bile, and is generally a manipulative bastard who'll stab you in the back given half a chance.
And I can't find any fault in that statement. Most people are, and thus... Privacy will remain an important thing to fight for so long as we have reason to fight amongst ourselves.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...at Sharper Image.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
They can tell me if the person I'm talking to online is wearing pants.
Sean
When I first used FB, I kept most of the personal information blank. I only told it my age, that I was male, and that I was in a relationship and not looking for one.
FB at once started serving up gay-oriented ads. I never clicked on any of them or in any other way expressed interest, yet over time the percentage of these seemed to increase.
I finally gave up, and filled in the "interested in" section. The moment that field went from blank to "women", the gay ads vanished.
It isn't clear whether FB actually thought that I was gay, or just sought to pressure me into answering more questions about myself. If the former, its algorithms are entirely too simplistic. If the latter, it's evil.
This is old news (and really pretty obvious) and have been known in the gay community since FB started :) I have ~250 friends and being gay, quite a few of my friends are gay too. Whenever I click on some new person I can usually tell whether that person is gay (at least if it's a guy) or not, simply based on the number of gay friends we have in common (i.e. I don't even need to look at that person's friends individually to see whom of them are gay). So if we don't have any friends in common at all, it's usually a sign that the person isn't gay. Now, being from a small country (Denmark, 5.5 mio. citizens) implies a smaller gay community, but I would still think this observation would be valid in other countries at least within cities.
The reason this works is of course that within all communities there are certain people who have _a lot_ of friends on Facebook and sort of serve as "magnets", in the sense that someone in the same community is likely to sooner or later run into that person and be added as a friend on Facebook - or at least run into one out of the "magnet" persons you are friends with.
What's an Assumpiton?
The problem is when we start using these perfectly reasonable tools to begin to make real decisions. You are guilty because the runes said so. Most of us tend to believe that decisions should be made on some direct evidence, not indirect assumption. I mean it is not liek some guys think, that every girl that won't go out with them is a lesbian and every guy that hates football is gay.
There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi. Just like sleeping with large numbers of the opposite sex does not make one straight, and may indicate a deep seated concern, there is nothing other than a self identification that can suggest a real sexual preference. I don't think a professional, or computer program, or parent can within a reasonable certainty state a sexual preference for another person. And this has nothing to do with the controversy. It has to do with weather we live by reason and evidence or by superstition and hearsay. I think the MIT people are simply too infatuated with cult of technology.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Every so often we get one of those delicious stories in the news about some right-wing christian conservative being outed by an ex-gay lover or getting arrested after trying to pick up men in a public rest room. The funny thing is these are usually the most anti-gay people imaginable and it turns out they've either been playing or been wanting to play dingle-dangle-dingle with the personal equipment of their own gender for quite a while now. Can I just point this thing at Fox News, the Radio Talk Show Tinfoil Hats or the homophobic side of Congress and get a reading on how many of them are secretly smoking pole on the side?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So twenty-five of your thirty Facebook friends are gay and of the same gender as you. And they conclude you're probably gay! Wow!
Twenty-five of your thirty Facebook friends who say to be gay, who are said to be gay or which the system assumes to be gay?
In the last case, we will have lots of people being indicated as homosexuals based on distant associations. It might even end up saying everyone is gay. All the system does is speculations.
The great majority of my friends drink beer often and likes soccer. I do not.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
colloquialism "Birds of a feather.." confirmed empirically. stop the presses.
There's a Spanish saying, "tell me who you are with and I'll tell you who you are". I guess this is scientific proof.
I have a program that can determine if someone on facebook may be gay, liberal, conservative, plus what their top 5 movies are, their top 5 albums, if they're bored, and even sometimes what they're eating! I call it: a browser.
Amy: This is Bolt Rolands. Bolt is a hyper-sled racer with ten wins on the pro circuit.
Bolt: Hello, beautiful!
Bender: (whispers) I think she means ten wins on the gay circuit.
Bolt: (chuckling) I wish! Those cats can really fly.
I think the MIT people are simply too infatuated with cult of technology.
This just in, people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology love technology!
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
You have two concepts confused:
1) What features women say they find attractive in men
2) What features women *actually* find attractive in men
The two are not even remotely close to the same.
Comment of the year
You also post on Slashdot, which would suggest you are more logical than 99% of women.
My wife is pretty logical. She understands that many things women do are ridiculous and illogical. The problem is that even understanding that, she still does them sometimes.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Don't get me wrong - I love slashdot. But I have to disagree that posting on slashdot raises your logic quotient. 50% of the reason why I skim posts is to watch the irrational / illogical comment wars unfold. It's kinda fascintating.
I created this account just so I could comment on this story
Sensuality + respect + kindness = the kind of man no woman can resist. Gotta respect yourself and her, though.
Qxe4
Is this the same Hal Abelson of SICP fame?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Namely, the project shows that its authors consider "gayness"/homosexuality to be something that many people would like to hide, to the point that they would suffer embarrassment or worse if someone else was able to infer it from other data.
Why not make "Project White-dar"? I'll bet you could figure out if someone is white (or black, or Hispanic, or Zoroastrian) based on their Facebook friends. Most white people don't go around online pointing out loudly that they're white. You don't see too many Slashdot sigs that say, "Hey, I'm Caucasian." But I'm guessing most white people would also not really care if you figured out that they were white based on their Facebook friends, or where they live, or some other data.
I think there are lots of kinds of information that people broadcast about themselves--income, education level, relationship status, etc.--which are expressed implicitly in various forms--language usage, clothing style, social networks, etc. Nevertheless people often don't state these things openly.
Why should being gay be any different in this day and age, at least in countries that no longer have widespread institutionalized discrimination against gays?
Bottom line: All of the interest in this study seems to derive from the tacit notion that there is or should be something inherently shameful about being gay.
My bicyles
Where are the funny mods when you need them?
People tend to point out ways in which they are NOT the default for a given venue. So you can reasonably conclude that those who don't point out their differences probably don't have said differences. Rather like how here on Slashdot, we can reasonably assume posters are geeks unless they state otherwise, because that's the local default.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
For the most part it gets poor reviews. A common criticism is that the world becomes uninhabitable in a few "billion years*". If a game is designed with such a critical flaw in the game-play, what other faults lurk beneath the surface?
Another major criticism is less than half the players "win" the game. If you are the type that hates to lose, I recommend using the reincarnation option. If your "religion" is "Hindu" or "Buddist" it's turned on automatically for you.
A word of warning: Do NOT start playing this game unless you have plenty of free time. A typical game lasts 70-80 "years" of in-game time, and that's without the "reincarnation" option. This is truly a game only for the idle rich.
*Short periods of time are commonly expressed in "seconds" and small multiples thereof. Larger periods of time are commonly expressed in "years."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There is the issue of what makes a person gay, straight, or bi.
It goes beyond that. Unlike what most people think not everyone is either male or female. Some people are born with body parts that are "male" and "female". Genetically females are said to have two X Chromosomes, XX, while males have an X and a Y, XY. However some people are born with XXY, XXXY, and XXXXY karotypes. These people are said to have ambiguous genitalia and are called Intersexuals. The more commonly known name for them is hermaphrodites. I don't know but the South African female athlete who's been in the news because of the question of her sex, with some saying she's not female, may be one.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It is totally true. But it has to be real, you can't have fake respect like opening the door for her and then not paying attention to what she wants.
Qxe4
Namely, the project shows that its authors consider "gayness"/homosexuality to be something that many people would like to hide.
I don't see that implication myself. The summary mentions other factors that can be predicted by this kind of research: whether a person is "happy, fat, liberal, or conservative". Are these also things which the researchers believe people wish to hide? Although being outed as a conservative might be considered embarassing by the average Slashdot poster.
The thing that is 'already obvious to others' is that you are a pretentious dolt with vainglorious delusions and a gross ignorance of the existence of confirmation bias.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
For gay Slashdot readers like me, this article is a good reminder why (situation allowing!) it's best to be out of the closet and upfront with everyone. I came out to my folks when I was 16, and have always been upfront about my gayness, and I've reaped the benefits of this:
1. no having to lie/watch everything I say
2. no worries about been "found out" if I use some gay-oriented website (such as gaydar.co.uk)
3. no blackmail is possible (I remember that it was an excuse used by government agencies in order to deny hiring gays, as they could allegedly be blackmailed about their sexuality).
4. being an out gay man, straight people who get to know me learn that gay is good/they tend to get rid of their preconceptions about gays.
5. I can use Facebook/Flickr and not give a damn about who can see who my friends/groups are.
Basically, as an out gay man I can read the article, ponder on my Facebook account, and can calmly think "So f*ck*ng what??"
This is because being out of the closet defangs homophobes in many ways..
Of course I understand why some gay/lesbian/bi folk would be in the closet (live in a small town, close-minded friends/family/employers, work for the US military etc.), but if you're in the closet and reading this, realize that in the long run it's so much nicer to "thine own self be true", and I've been so much happier since I came out all those years ago.
I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a geek my dear! ;-)
Yup, that is what they all say. It isn't what they want though. Guys like that live exclusively in the friend zone.