Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I just hope they don't invent a virgin-radar.
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.
There aren't any, and that's how I want it to be :-)
And yet you registered for a slashdot account.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Data miners mining minors' data
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
"And yet you registered for a slashdot account."
My social interaction is restricted to 4chan where my info will be respected.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I just assumed you had a cold.
(And a speech-to-text interface.)
I can see the fnords!
As bad as it is in the US,
Too late. If it's bad, I don't care where it's worse. It's bad in the US. Go to some place like New Zealand. You'll find many straight people saying "partner" in relation to their spouse or unmarried life partner. When the terminology is such where a committed pair of gays and a committed straight couple can talk without having the words they choose reveal something about themselves, then you know you are free. The US still pushes terminology that separates gays. If they want to talk family at work, they either have to lie, or they are revealed in the first sentence. Tolerance isn't trying to pretend it doesn't matter. Tolerance is an apathy of the personal details of others. Masturbate to wildlife videos of seals mating? I don't care. Don't hurt seals, and I'll never bother you. But in the US, someone that thinks oddly is persecuted. For a country that prides itself on the freedom of speech and the freedom of thought that's considered even more important, there's a lot of persecution for thoughtcrimes like liking someone in "that way" that you don't approve of.
Learn to love Alaska