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.
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.
. .
if that "Honey-Boo-Boo like" on Facebook will lower my IQ score...
Karma: Bad
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..."
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$
So facebook knows all sorts of things about people.
Here's a question: Does facebook know if you're guilty?
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.
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
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.
Here's an interesting question, though: What percentage of Facebook users have been adversely affected by Facebook's privacy ills?
Have I had a police officer show up at my door with a search warrant because Facebook believes I'm a drug user? Nope.
Have I been hit on by men because Facebook believes I'm homosexual? Nope.
Have a group of republicans descended on me because Facebook believes I'm republican? Nope.
Have I lost a job due to any of the above? Nope. Been denied a loan? Nope.
Don't get me wrong, I somewhat agree with you. But I'm not sure your "battered wife" analogy stands up in that there is no actual battery going on. If I were to use your analogy, the best I could say is "how can she be married to someone who could beat her, even though he never has?"
The authors of the study all liked LOTR.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.
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
Denial?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.