Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Knows If You're Gay, Use Drugs, Or Are a Republican
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Not that there's anything wrong with that — as the Guardian reports that Facebook users are unwittingly revealing their sexual orientation, drug use and political beliefs– using only public 'like' updates. A study of 58,000 Facebook users in the US found that sensitive personal characteristics about people can be accurately inferred from information in the public domain. Researchers were able to accurately infer a Facebook user's race, IQ, sexuality, substance use, personality or political views (PDF) using only a record of the subjects and items they had 'liked' on Facebook – even if users had chosen not to reveal that information. 'It is good that people's behavior is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed,' says Michal Kosinski, 'But what is shocking is that you can use the same data to predict your political views or your sexual orientation. This is something most people don't realize you can do.' For example, researchers were able to predict whether men were homosexual with 88% accuracy by their likes of Facebook pages such as 'Human Rights Campaign' and 'Wicked the Musical' – even if those users had not explicitly shared their sexuality on the site. According to the study other personality traits linked to predictive likes include for High IQ — 'The Godfather,' 'Lord of the Rings,' 'The Daily Show'; for Low IQ — 'Harley Davidson,' 'I Love Being A Mom,' 'Tyler Perry'; and for male heterosexuality — 'Wu Tang Clan,' 'Shaq,' and 'Being Confused after Waking Up from Naps.' Facebook's default privacy settings mean that your 'likes' are public to anyone and Facebook's own algorithms already use these likes to dictate what stories end up in users' news feeds, while advertisers can access them to determine which are the most effective ads to show you as you browse."
FB incorrectly presumes that I am not str8 and like MJ, when I happen to be str8 and don't use MJ.
I just like Freedom.
All your analysis of Like proves is that you don't get how people work.
You can tell that just by talking to people.
They have a job for you at Facebook.
Turns out, I'm gay. Even Facebook knew it before I did.
...stereotypes happen for a reason?
The highest intelligence indicator were the users who ignored everything, revealed very little and never "liked" anything - knowing that anything they did on facebook would be mined and used for metrics and marketing.
. .
Next headline "Slashdot Knows If You Have Higher Education, Neuroses, Porn On Your Computer"
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
What the hell do any of those listed have to do with male heterosexuality? All it shows is that you are an American with narcolepsy. Shouldn't they be looking for likes of certain types of pictures and jokes?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This is yet another reason to avoid Facebook.
How does it know you're gay? Easy - it just asks your Tivo. Pervert.
time. Exciting findings.
"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."
Whether the average Facebook user (a nice new metric for sociologists everywhere) understands what the knowledge in Facebook's database may be used for is a new question. One that evolves with market opportunity. I wonder if the graph interface could be used to measure the level of concern or ignorance within the community of FacedBookers toward such political issues as privacy?
The illusion of privacy is dead. Long live the illusion of privacy.
if that "Honey-Boo-Boo like" on Facebook will lower my IQ score...
Karma: Bad
I love Lord of the Rings AND Harleys, hate rap in general, believe in human rights, and enjoy the hell out of productions like Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. So am I an intelligent homosexual male? A dumbass straight male? A dumbass homosexual male? Or an intelligent straight male?
But you know what? FB can presume all they want on their own time. The second they start using stats like this to say they KNOW someone is in one category or the other and make that information publically available, is the second they open themselves up libel suits for the 22% who are incorrectly flagged as idiots, gay, or whatever and it affects their life in any way.
Then again, shit like this is why I never "like" any brands or companies on FB. Fuck that noise.
Uses a similar methodology (SVD, which was the highest scoring method in isolation) to correlate Likes with Traits, whereas Netflix used prior movie Likes to correlate with future movie Likes. Effectively, Netflix's competition was probably correlating with a hidden indicator or personality subtype set which corresponded strongly to likes of particular movies.
It is highly likely that were they to apply the winning method from the Netflix competition (SVD paired with a weighted set of other indicators) that they would probably show even higher correlation and predictive power for personality subtypes.
Most people don;t realize that Facebook has become as big a threat as Google in the privacy game.
Those like buttons on so very many pages on the net report back to Facebook everytime the page is loaded. At an absolute minimum, Facebook is notified of your IP address when you visit the page, even if you are not a Facebook member and even if you have NEVER visited Facebook. Yet, they still are able to track interests and activities including where and when your IP address visit pages on the internet.
Any time you see a like button, Facebook already logged your visit. You do NOT need to click it.
And if you do have a facebook account and you are logged in, then they knwo even more about who you are and what you do across the WWW.
yes, gay drug addict republicans, facebook is out to get you!
From what I've heard from Fox News, everyone gay or who uses drugs is a Democrat. Oh, and everyone on welfare or any sort of gov't assistance is an Obama-backer according to Romney. In fact, most welfare recipients are drug-using Obama supporters who need to be drug tested and kicked off of suckling at the gov'ts teats from the GOP official stance.
... High IQ — ... <b>'The Daily Show'</b> ...</quote>
Fail!
Karma: Bad
Haven't we been down this road a few times already?
I love stories like this. As if I needed any more, but this is just yet another reason why I am so glad I removed my Facebook account years ago.
Why people will happily hand over the intimate details of their lives, in the face of dozens of horrifying Facebook privacy stories, ill never know.
I guess Facebook users are like battered wives. They get their teeth kicked in by the abusive BF time after time, but wont leave him because 'they still love him'.
I'm male, and I liked Wicked. My being gay is going to be a shock to both my wife and my husband.
NoScript
/rant
Similar research conducted by MIT student project back in 2009. See http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2611/2302. Surprised it wasn't cited.
I can do better than 88% accuracy at guessing if people are homosexual by guessing "no" every time.
And Slashdot can now think it knows for everyone else based on whether they clicked "Read the rest of this comment..."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121110/17435521005/dhs-fbi-present-you-might-be-terrorist-if-hotel-guest-edition.shtml
And it rated for people not living in heavily American culturally influenced and non native English speaking countries that they all had a lower IQ.
bash$
Which is why you need to have noscript or face-blockers to read the net.
Of course this assumes that Disqus, Intensedebate or other forum software aren't as insidious/snooping.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Because you Googled "shower squeegee."
So facebook knows all sorts of things about people.
Here's a question: Does facebook know if you're guilty?
I'm just glad they can't detect sperm on my keyboard.
Not on pages, not on friends' comments, not on all the My Little Pony pictures I post.
"Facebook Has Information That Can Infer If You're Gay, Use Drugs, Or Are a Republican"
Researchers, who crunch data found on Facebook, can infer traits to an accuracy of as much as 88% in one instance.
whether men were homosexual with 88% accuracy
You can achieve this by guessing that 100% of men are heterosexual.
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams
This is not shocking, it's kind of obvious. And in other news, bears shit in woods.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It says more about the author that they'd group homosexuality, drug use, and republicanism together as "dirty secrets". So much for tolerance.
Not that there's anything wrong with that
Yes, there is. Nobody gives a shit if you're gay or do drugs, but if they find out you're a closet Republican then you're in for some well-deserved bullying!
...imagine what Reddit knows. /shudders/
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Political party affiliation is public record. Anyone can find out, There isn't any secretive voodoo to it.
I left the TV on when I fell asleep, so I was confused when I woke up from my nap to discover Tyler Perry talking about The Lord of the Rings on the Daily Show. If I was that rich I would just buy a really Wicked Harley Davidson.
Facebook can predict your sexuality with 69% accuracy.
Facebook guesses if your are hetrosexual or homosexual 88% of the time? I can beat that.
Whoever is reading this, I'm going to guess for you specifically with 98.3 % accuracy.
You are Straight.
1.7% in the US are gay. So is it just me or is a 88% accuracy when you can just guess one answer every time and be 98% accurate worthless?
I was having a conversation about physics with a friend via comments. It wrapped up with him expressing he enjoyed the argument, thanked me, and added "we should get high sometime. Haha, jk." Anyway, I liked the comment because of the leading statement. The next day I see a "suggested post" about marijauna. Thanks FB. I tried pot in college, the time and place for that, and have too much to lose by getting caught with it now. However, I think you should be able to do what you want with your body and legalization would cut expenses of chasing it. But FB seems to think I'm a habitual smoker based on the ads I've seen.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
LOL
Given that less than 10% of the population identifies themselves as being gay, an algorithm that assumed everyone were heterosexual would beat that 88% accuracy figure easily. Some of the other analysis done may have merit, but that headline fail is not.
What they are saying is that out of those 10% they can predict 88% correctly.
I predict you're too dumb to be gay.
This table has the most indicative likes : http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/03/07/1218772110.DCSupplemental/st01.pdf
Thought it would be useful to put it here so people don't have to click through 3 "supporting data" links.
if facebook can do this stuff with your public 'likes', I can't even imagine what sorts of highly detailed personality and behavior profiles (and behavior predictions) companies could come up with if they had access to a continuous stream of information about what music you are listening to at any given time. If you know what music a person likes, enough to reliably predict songs they'll respond positively to, and you are streaming music to mostly passive listeners, like radio, but you're also engaging those listeners to give positive and negative feedback about the music you're playing, then you're collecting massive amounts of information not only about a person's likes and dislikes in general (which is the extent of netflix's data-collecting capabilities for the most part), but since you're engaged with your audience directly though the songs you're playing over extended periods of time during single continuous listening sessions, and then these single continuous sessions pile up over days, months, years, you can develop extremely colorful pictures of an individual's personality, see changes in mood and temperament over periods of time, and make predictions about future mood changes. And if you know what a person likes, you also know what he doesn't like. If you know what kind of music will make a listener feel happy, then you also know what to play to bring her down, or make her feel scared. If you have a profile like this, and can see how a person changes and responds over long periods of time, and you know what he likes and dislikes, how to make him happy or sad, and you're also streaming him music every day of the week for several hours during his workday, then you can also start manipulating his moods and behavior by modifying what you play him. To me that sort of makes facebook's like activity profiles seem a little weak, especially since any internet streaming media company worth its salt already has access to that data anyway.
found that sensitive personal characteristics about people can be accurately inferred from information in the public domain.
I've done this stuff, for both ad targeting and music targeting, and I understand the math. Knowing whether you are gay is just the tip of the iceberg.
From the data it can be inferred whether you believe Bradley Manning was justified, whether you think it is treason for a politician to support warrantless surveillance, and whether you believe the "four boxes" epigram is relevant in the current context.
It can be inferred how you react to various turns of phrase, which ways of presenting an idea will ring with you, and therefore how to present a story to you, such that you will be likely to repeat the sound bites on one side of the issue or the other.
They can do this, with an automated system, for hundreds of millions of people -- as can anyone who pays them enough for the data or analysis. It is not a difference in type from what has gone by the name of PR, spin, or handling; but rather a difference of speed, pervasiveness, precision targeting, and potency. It puts more power to distort human perception of reality in the hands of fewer people than ever before -- by orders of magnitude.
The data, once gathered, will remain, and will be packaged and sold, and cracked and siezed, until long after you are dead -- barring some very serious and extremely disruptive counteractivity. It is getting worse every day, and the cost of correcting it is growing exponentially.
Most people don't know it is happening, and most of those who do don't seem to grasp the consequences.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
So you're telling me that Facebook has programmers who can write algorithms into their code to analyze data with STATISTICS?!?! GASP!!! I am AMAZED. Wait . . . why is this news?
Confirmation that Tyler Perry fans are idiots.
I can do better than that:
I predict you are not homosexual.
That should be 92% - 97% accurate.
"Facebook Knows If You're Gay, Use Drugs, Or Are a Republican"
Seems to me that those three descriptors are not mutually exclusive.
Can Facebook make correct inferences about gay, junkie republicans or does it break down if more than one category is determined?
I'm also confused on how republican is different from a gay drug user. Isn't snorting coke off each other's cocks a republican pastime?
... that I am a minigun-armed human-murdering mutant freak that uses a child army.
These things are trivial to game.
other personality traits linked to predictive likes include for High IQ — ...'Lord of the Rings,'
bahahahaha
Need I say more?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
lie
Lest I summon him, I shall be vague, but modifying a certain file in /etc/ works wonders as well.
I'm gay, use drugs and am a Republican. Not kidding.
I'm screwed.
Man, I always click to read more on those things unless I've read it before. They must think me a perv which, honestly...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I haven't done a full netstat trap'n'trace, but last I looked, the blue "f" on many pages sure looks like it opens a uniqueID IMG tag HTTP connection to *.facebook.com . From which a simple cookie query would reveal any fb.com cookies you leave available. So they could know you've visited the page whether you "liked" it or not.
I don't much like this tracking, so I create separate user profiles (Seamonkey/Firefox) for hazardous surfing. The profile has cookies for whichever site under quarantine and is only used for that site. Main profile swept clean of suspect cookies.
Two of the smartest people I know like Harley Davidson. Hmm... What does that say about me? No, seriously. They're both very smart. IQs over 130. The just like Harleys. But I haven't seen them liking "I Love Being a Mom" or Tyler Perry. Now what would be funny would be an app that tells you what inferences Facebook draws about you because of your likes. But somehow I doubt anybody's going to make an app that tells people it thinks they're stupid.
... get a "Don't like" button, then FB might be relevant....
Our company uses advanced techniques to ensure your facebook likes are perfectly aligned to your ideal you! Want to come off as a macho ladies man, but have too many musicals liked? We can fix that! Want people to see you as intelligent, but have Honey BooBoo in your news feed? We can fix that!
Just give us your account and after a few days, you too can be a facebook bot!
They took two individuals, one of whom identified as gay on their profile and one of whom identified as straight, and then asked the model to pick which was which. Guessing straight every time would've given you 50%.
I like all of those things but curly fries. Now it thinks I'm dumb :(
The actual paper can be found at (click full text): http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/06/1218772110.abstract
The "88% accuracy" figure actually has a meaning. From the paper:
"shows the prediction accuracy of dichotomous variables expressed in terms of the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC), which is equivalent to the probability of correctly classifying two randomly selected users one from each class (e.g., male and female)."
Given one gay and one straight. They have 88% accuracy of predicting which class the person belongs to. The strategy of simply picking no, would give you 50% accuracy (on average).
People like to think that they're "undefinable". In fact, all they are are values of a vector random variable. If you know the values of some of the components you can infer the values of others, because they are not all independent. A similar principle (vector quantization) is used in lossy data compression.
Somebody will come in here and say "No, you can't know for certain, that's what makes us human" -- no, that's what makes you a random variable. A vector-valued one, but a random variable nonetheless.
Their flagship product is called Unicorn.
BANG!
Come on.... Facebook is just a popular site for social networking, and obviously, the operators want to collect, collate and monetize the information people share - because they're not charging anything for using it.
If you don't get any value out of using it, great... don't use it. But the self-righteous. "Sure glad *I* don't use Facebook!" comments are already getting really old and stale.
Before the Internet was really in wide use by the masses, I grew up in the BBS era of the mid 1980's through early 90's. Back then, most BBS's were just run by individuals like myself, as a hobby interest, and we didn't even posses hardware powerful enough to crunch data we collected (if we wanted to, or had any inkling back then it might be of monetary value). But really, they were the original "social networking" tools, and people shared all kinds of stuff about their personal lives on the message forums! Heck, the guy who developed the "FidoNet" method of exchanging messages between BBS's throughout the world was gay, and plenty of us knew it. It didn't have to be culled out of some computer system observing what he "liked" as he looked at information online.
All I'm saying is, Facebook doesn't really have ANY info on people that wasn't put there WILLINGLY by participants. Yeah, you might have a valid complaint here and there if YOU don't want to share a certain photo or piece of info, but someone you know gets on there and shares it. But that's nothing new or Facebook specific! People have been showing other people photos of their friends and co-workers since photography began. And IMO, it really does serve purposes of being a good source of entertainment AND a good tool for locating or keeping up with old friends. I have several FB friends who were people I used to be good real life friends with from as far back as grade school, and who now live in other countries. Without FB, I would just remain completely out of touch with them. With it, I get to see a glimpse of what their lives are like in a part of the world I've never been able to visit myself, and I think that's an enriching experience.
Advertisers will ALWAYS try to leverage all the tools at their disposal to target market things to you, and Facebook is no exception. It'll probably be one of the testing grounds for the most cutting edge of these computer algorithms, since so much data is there in one place. But that really doesn't disturb me... If it surprises someone, I'd say they really should take their head out of the sand.
Facebook knows that If You're Gay and are a Republican, you're smoking some serious shit.
I mean someone could deduce that I am a college aged republican just by looking at me walking anywhere. From that they could infer alcohol consumption, possible substance use, and more. Should that mean I take protective measures and where nondescript gray tee shirts, sweats, and a sweatshirt everywhere?
Yes. Bye-polar IQ. You insensitive claude.
Dilbert's pointy haired bosses crew?
"I had not selected any political orientation, yet these researchers were able to predict my Democrat leanings, merely based on my 'like' of Barack Obama's page. What witchcraft science is that!?"
From all I could read of these (repeated) stories, this is so basic it barely even count as data mining. Also, I'd really like to see the the type I and II errors in that thing: sure, the guys who 'liked' a dozen pages for disney musicals might have higher chances of turning out to be gay, but what about the handful who just really like musicals? Same for the hetero guys who support gay friends and will like gay rights pages. And better hope that absolutely nobody out there practices sarcastic liking (but we're safe, because really: who is ever sarcastic online these days).
Wake me up when we are talking actual science and real data-mining, not two-bit hacking and obvious results.
... wait a minute! Doesn't that account for everybody???
Using large majorities one can apply many generalizations:
If you are well read, you have a higher IQ. Same with College.
Anybody liking Republicans, or Fox News, or Rush has a low IQ. (duh)
If you Hate Fags then you are probably a low IQ Fag and too stupid to know it.
If you are big for Gay Legal Marriage then you are straight... but you might hate gays.
If you liked a politician who has an actual track record, your IQ goes lower. (remember: the majority)
If you liked Romney you have Stockholm syndrome.
Funny, the really intelligent people I know aren't in Mensa.
The ones who are in Mensa are actually idiots who are good at taking stupid little tests.
Perhaps you need to talk with your Mensa buddies about how well the Mensa investment club is doing, its been a joke for over 18 years.
"Or"???!11?!!?!?
you deserve to have all your freedoms stripped away. Not only have you participated in the largest data mining known to man, you've also set precedence about the legality of it - and more importantly, the very ignorant attitude towards privacy as a whole.
From TFA:
The Williams Institute found that, overall, an estimated 8.2 percent of the population had engaged in some form same-sex sexual activity. Put another way, 4.7 percent of the population had wandered across the line without coming to think of themselves as either gay or bisexual.
That same study found out that (from the same FA):
just 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 identify as gay or lesbian, while another 1.8 percent -- predominantly women -- identify as bisexual.
Basically, that "less than 2%" number is the people who think of themselves as being homosexual or bisexual.
8.2% apparently just like having sex with people of the same sex. Clearly, they're not gay.
Cause they don't identify with being gay.
Cause it's all about identifying.
That's why I always identify myself with Superman.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I wonder if the combination python+erlang is a strong signature of racism. At least, it seems to be the case in Russia
Where is that on the predictive spectrum?
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
So this study found that stereotypes are completely, completely true. That's great.
I'm going to go ahead and suggest that most people know the message they are sending when they like a page like "Republican National Comittie" or "GAY SEX CLIPs". The whole point of liking it is to 'tell the world'. In fact, if my wall is any indication, that's the ONLY reason people like things. Okay, that and websites that trick them into it.
I always looked at slashdot kink-trolls like I was watching a train-wreck in slow motion. On one hand, the dehumanizing sight of gore and sinew splayed about should be stomach turning, especially as others gather around afterwards, having not seen the initial spectacle (this makes it something personal and special between you and the ones who got painfully dismembered by the gruesome event), but on the other hand, I _just can't_ look away...
Interesting off-topic. One of my coworkers today genuinely thought I didn't realize that ctrl+z was undo in Windows products.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
It doesn't matter if they're right or not in your case ... If their marketing is right 88% of the time, they've got better rates than most advertising firms. If they're wrong in your case, you're too small to matter, and you'll just get the wrong spam.
Golda Meir was quoted as saying "Don't be so humble, you're not that great." To rephrase a bit, don't be so paranoid ... you're not that important.
Ghostery does per-site whitelisting of mentioned networks at least for FF.
baby pictures and starts show me ads for getting a vasectomy. That's when I'm impressed.
>It is good that people's behavior is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed
If that is overdone and this is the only kind of story people read its not a good thing, then its a threat to the cohesion of our societies.
We'll end up with people sitting inside their own fantasy bubbles, having no clue about things they don't like.
The problems occur when those subcultures clash or the voters are too ignorant to make an informed choice.
What damage the lack of privacy is capable of doing in a worst case scenario can also be easily imagined...
While from a machine learning standpoint that stuff is very fascinating, the social implications are scary.
There probably should be a law against datamining a persons opinions like that.
Coz I browse with the ad-block plugin with Firefox.
Makes the web a whole lot more enjoyable.
BTW here is a fun trick. Trying posting a message about Ad-Block on facebook. It will get blocked.
Next try the most direct method you can think of to tell your friends to try ad-block on facebook. See what gets allowed..... :-)
Clearly FB has algorithms that censor posts. It is fun to see what really annoys them though
They are beautiful in their own right I suppose. My most common shortcut in Windows would be WinKey+D.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I can be 95% correct predicting if a somebody is gay: ....
No
No
No
No
Gay people like musicals and stupid people like Tyler Perry... Such groundbreaking conclusions.
Actually, I use /var/lib/iptables with the following ranges blocked...
31.13.24.0/21
31.13.64.0/18
66.220.144.0/20
69.63.176.0/20
69.171.224.0/19
74.119.76.0/22
103.4.96.0/22
173.252.64.0/18
204.15.20.0/22
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I'm not ON faceache, so they haven't a clue.
Or does the headline mean that the default is that unless proven oftherwise, EVERYONE is a drugged up faggot republican? :-)
I suppose I'm just not paranoid enough.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
One day I was tired of seeing adverts for dating sites, so I changed my relationship status from "single" to "married"...
Then I started getting adverts for baby stuff ( adverts asking if I'm pregnant =P )
So I changed it again to "complicated"... Immediately Facebook started showing adverts for computer games lol
The study claims they can predict homosexuality with an 88% accuracy?
You can do far better than that by chance. surveys suggest that around 3-7% say of the population is homosexual (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States)
Therefore if you "predict" that everyone is straight, you will be correct around 95% of the time. Even randomly picking 1 out of 20 people as homosexual with no analysis of their likes would retain a 95% strike rate.
(I know, chances are they mean that they only get 12% false negatives on their homosexual predictions, compared to 100% or 95% on my systems)
It's never about *proving* you're gay, conservative, or whatever. It's about obtaining a better than even probability that you might be. That's all that's required. And since when do you have to prove gossip? Facebook also happens to be way more reliable than gossip with a 90%-95% hit rate, ok? That's good enough for management work.
Since you seem to stop so far short of thinking it through, let me give you a few examples.
Consider your health insurance (if you have any). What's to stop every insurer in the country from assigning you a risk factor on basis of your facebook profile and use that to raise your premiums? Insurers deal in risks every single day: there simple are no certainties in insurance. Insuirance is the business of mitigating and managing risks. Facebook-based models would fit in perfectly. And you have no comebacks whatsoever unless it's legally prohibited to do this. Like it?
If someone were in charge of hiring staff for a sensitive position, and had reason to believe that certain of your facebook characteristics signaled that you'd be a 30% risk in the job instead of the ordinary 15%, what do you think that would do to your chances of being hired? Why do you assume a potential employer would take 1% more risk than they absolutely have to? Want to bet even now companies are checking with their legal department to see if they are allowed to weigh this kind of probability-based info when assessing candidates? How's that for fun?
If a manager in charge of a bank's mortgage desk thought that certain of your facebook characteristics signaled an increased risk of defaulting on your part, he/she could block your mortgage. No questions asked (and certainly no questions from you answered in any meaningful way). Good eh?
Just assume you're applying for a place in college (a good college). Competition is tough and one of the things that affects your chances is the essay you'll have to write about yourself and your motivation. How would you like that college to just assign a score to your facebook profile and use that instead?
If the above examples don't focus your mind a little, I don't know what will.
Assigning a score to someone's facebook profile only takes a few millisecs of computer time plus the cost of processing a facebook profile, but you can outsource that to a consultant (or even a website).
Chances are you won't even be talked to if your facebook profile suggests there's a better than even chance you have some characteristics the person considering to get in touch with you deems undesirable.
Secondly, people are adept at concealing any personal *characteristics* considered undesirable by whatever group they try to be a part of by adjusting their *behaviour*. It's part of human nature.
So you won't probably won't find out by simply talking to them. And most of the time people succeed in keeping that up for long periods of time or even indefinitely, allowing them to function in the group of their choice.
This development could well cut that sort of chances short.
...I would have put Daily Show watchers in the low IQ group. That's seriously the dumbest show I ever wasted a few minutes of my life on. Never again!
Your Facebook profile will soon be the largest regret of your life.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
And with that, I no longer know what the word "hetrosexuality" means anymore.
I thought that was only a myth....
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Lets say the system gets really good. Would you just give it your charge card number and say 'entertain me'?
into the works if you wake up sexually confused after a nap.
Denial?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I need to see some more of these "decision likes" so that I can determine the average IQ of my friends list... and maybe crop it a bit.
It would appear that Mensa members are higher in Egotism and wannabe I.Q. It's mostly a club of.. "Go solve this puzzle and post your time on Facebook".
The smartest people I know won't have a Facebook account. They tend to like being low profile.
It is somehow disturbing that gay males aren't confused after waking up from naps.
bickerdyke
There is nothing "shocking" about this. However there is something OFFENSIVE about it - the *alarmism* of the hack reporter who falsely claims that it's "shocking." "Shock" is in the eye of the beholder, and I am SICK TO DEATH of hack reporters telling me what my feelings are. I already knew perfectly well what my feelings were - the diametric opposite of what the hack reporter told me! Reporters are all ASSHOLES! Reporters are all hacks!
They are beautiful in their own right I suppose. My most common shortcut in Windows would be WinKey+D.
Is this where I say the best shortcut key is Alt+F4 repeatedly until you can install a proper operating system like Linux?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves. Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are. The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data mining algorithms.
The individual desires judgement. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.
the covariance of these properties.
I mean does facebook know if you're a gay republican on drugs if you're not on facebook?
Pretty soon facebook is going to be recommending dealers for people.
I just realized that the Facebook world has decided that I'm a drudged out gay guy. No wonder I'm not getting laid by women.
To all those members of Mensa: Talking about Mensa does not convey the message you think it does.
Are you sure that isn't dependent upon which state you call home? In my state, no political registration is necessary.
That's right, North Dakota doesn't force you to take sides until you actually vote. What a concept!
Most gay Republicans probably are heavily medicated to help combat their schizophrenia.
Not me, I don not have nor have I ever had a Facebook account.
Typical generation young invading your privacy take a hike you hose bags!
Yes, but what if you are a gay Republican who likes using drugs while listening to Wu-Tang Clan and watching Kazaam?
... because they forgot they came to FB to at least follow or contact a couple of friends, whose network and 'likes' definitely have them all belonging to this or that side...
This happened to me, exactly this way.
I'm in my 50s, came to FB only to keep contact with my sons. Friended only them and very close relatives.
First person I was proposed to 'like' was my political party leader. All the next ones similarly were on the 'right' side to me.
So, while I *never* entered any preferences in FB, just because I friended my sons I was perfectly 'located' by FB.
And if I just had agreed to 'like' the first 3 persons proposed (just to see how it works, you know, first time user...) then *everyone* not only FB would locate me as easily.
So, no, "revealing very little" is of absolutely no help. Because very little of your friends have already revealed everything for you.
As I said, these are not really intelligent.
Maybe great minds think alike http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414591,00.asp
> Most Facebook users have embarrassing comments or status updates
> hidden in the depths of their social network profile --- long forgotten
> but not gone. So why not tidy up a little with the new FaceWash Web app?
> The service, which is geared primarily toward recent college graduates, aims
> to delete your seedy Facebook history before you enter the professional world.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
This week on American Dad ...
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Why are they lumping in Gay people with Drug users and Republicans, as if it's a bad thing?
You can say that if you'd like though I use Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Windows 7 here. ;) I'm an OS whore I suppose. I have other computers with other OSes on 'em around the house (as well as phones, ebook readers, and iDevices) but I mostly use Windows 7 because it is there and, alas, I'm lazy. I did, however, quantify it with "in" which should have probably let ya know that I use more than one OS though I suppose I could have been clearer. Either way, Linux has its place though it appears that that place isn't on this laptop because I am lazy and I kind of like Windows 7. It's speedy, stable, and I've not had any security issues that I've found. Oh, and it does what I want it to do - easily and when I want it to do it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."