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Analyzing Tweets To Identify Psychopaths
nonprofiteer writes "Researchers presenting at Defcon next week have developed a psychopathy prediction model for Twitter. It analyzes linguistic tells to rate users' levels of narcissism, machiavellianism and other similarities to Patrick Bateman. 'The FBI could use this to flag potential wrongdoers, but I think it's much more compelling for psychologists to use to understand large communities of people,' says Chris Sumner of the Online Privacy Foundation. Some of the Twitter clues: Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word "hate." Using the word "we." Using periods. Using filler words such as 'blah' and 'I mean' and 'um.' So, um, yeah."
No, this system tries to predict the future by reading posts on twitter. Could a certain percentage of people who commit violent crime share the common trait of psychopathy? Certainly. Do all? No. In fact, a rather large percentage of the population are psychopathic, yet lead normal, non-violent lives. Far more people that are not psychopathic commit crimes than those with psychopathy.
The end result of this research is rather clear: Watch what you say on the internet, the FBI might flag you. And that's a far more dangerous threat than a few psychopaths walking around. If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while.