| |
News: How Facebook 'likes' can reveal clues to your sexuality
Member Since: 6/30/2012
Posts: 19,226
|
How Facebook 'likes' can reveal clues to your sexuality
Quote:
Facebook users could unwittingly reveal intimate details about their personal lives by declaring seemingly unrelated information, researchers have warned.Sexuality, drug use, political views and religious beliefs are all areas that can be accurately predicted by complete strangers monitoring online ‘inferences’, they said.The threat to privacy has been created by the social network’s ‘likes’ - the hugely popular system used to show approval of a range of subjects ranging from pop stars to chocolate bars, films, pastimes and interests.Although seemingly innocuous, the information can be pieced together like a jigsaw to build up profiles.
Declaring support for human rights, Wicked the Musical, Nike Basketball and Bruce Lee can be linked to provide a strong indicator of male homosexuality, for example.
Drug use is suggested by ‘liking’ Big Mommas movies, milkshakes and swimming, while high IQs are indicated by showing a taste for curly fries, Godfather movies and Morgan Freeman’s voice.
Researchers predicted male sexuality with 88 per cent accuracy and correctly predicted race 95 per cent of the time. They also had an 85 per cent success rate with political leanings and 82 per cent with religion.Campaigning organisation Privacy International said the technology threatened all aspects of people’s lives.
Executive director Dr Gus Hosein said: ‘It’s a nightmare scenario that Facebook are entirely responsible for setting up.
‘This information can be used to pre-categorise people. Banks could use it to decide who gets a loan.‘It also creates the perfect surveillance state for governments, who will know what people are reading and their exact political persuasion. It is more invasive than CCTV.’
The study - Private Traits and Attributes Are Predictable from Digital Records of Human Behaviour - was carried out by the University of Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre and based on the Facebook profiles of 58,000 people in the US. Their ‘likes’ were fed into a computer algorithm which was used to predict a range of personality traits. Accuracy was checked by comparing results with personal information provided by the volunteers, who were mostly aged between 16 and 30. Few had clicked on ‘likes’ which explicitly revealed personal information about themselves. For example, just five per cent of homosexuals had clicked on links such as ‘gay marriage’.Psychometrics Centre operations director Michal Kosinski said: ‘We believe that our results, while based on Facebook likes, apply to a wider range of online behaviours.‘Similar predications would be made from all manner of digital data, with this kind of secondary ‘inference’ made with remarkable accuracy - statistically predicting sensitive information people might not want revealed.
‘Given the variety of digital traces people leave behind, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to control.’ The findings will be of interest to the burgeoning online direct personalised marketing industry, which already uses ‘cookies’ to send tailored adverts to people surfing the net. But Mr Kosinski added: ‘I can imagine situations in which the same data and technology is used to predict political views or sexual orientation, posing threats to freedom or even life.’ Fears about threats to the privacy of Facebook users have increased since it was floated on Wall Street in a $100 billion share issue last year.Analysts warned it would need to find ways of generating more income from its 901 million monthly users, including 30 million in Britain.In December the company announced users of the Instagram photo-sharing website it owns no longer had the rights to their pictures, meaning images of people as young as 13 could be sold to advertisers. Facebook users can set privacy settings to protect their personal information - although many fail to do so.
The company declined to comment.
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/3/2012
Posts: 19,910
|
Thank god I don't "like" anything on Facebook other than photos/comments of my friends.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/7/2012
Posts: 2,040
|
too much reading.... someone break it down for me. lol
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/9/2012
Posts: 59,872
|
I mean I've used this as a clue to myself to see if someone I see that's hot is Gay. So late.
Go through them followers and if they follow a bunch of boys, that are also sexy. And if they liking men's pictures. I mean, this should be common-sense gays 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 6/12/2012
Posts: 3,733
|
Quote:
Originally posted by MunyKen
too much reading.... someone break it down for me. lol
|
Declaring support for human rights, Wicked the Musical, Nike Basketball and Bruce Lee can be linked to provide a strong indicator of male homosexuality, for example.
Drug use is suggested by ‘liking’ Big Mommas movies, milkshakes and swimming, while high IQs are indicated by showing a taste for curly fries, Godfather movies and Morgan Freeman’s voice.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 12/16/2008
Posts: 59,380
|
I use this to know if that person is gay, also if he gets the most of his likes from guys well you know that we have a winner 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 8/4/2012
Posts: 4,401
|
Isn't this common knowledge though?  I mean, duh!
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 2/16/2012
Posts: 8,690
|
I've been tagged at Wicked a few times. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/8/2012
Posts: 6,632
|
welp. time to unlike some artist pages~ 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 6/2/2011
Posts: 28,055
|
Quote:
|
.In December the company announced users of the Instagram photo-sharing website it owns no longer had the rights to their pictures
|
Wait, what
I only use Instagram for the filters, I turn on Airplane mode so nothing is actually saved on Instagram and I'm just left with a photo with the filter on my Ipod which I can later share however I want (or not).
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 13,978
|
I guess I'm a drug addicted genius then according to this article. 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 4/22/2012
Posts: 6,346
|
let me un-like Nicki right quick and then like 2 chainz....
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 9/23/2009
Posts: 26,796
|
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/14/2007
Posts: 25,912
|
I'm a smart, gay druggie apparently.
|
|
|
|
Banned
Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 27,690
|
Quote:
Originally posted by Hollister
let me un-like Nicki right quick and then like 2 chainz....
|
|
|
|
|
ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 3/22/2012
Posts: 53,769
|
When Gaga and Britney are in my top row of music likes, I think it's pretty obvious already.
|
|
|
|
ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 8/1/2012
Posts: 27,547
|
Well no ****, I mean how many straight guys do you know who likes Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Beyoncé 
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 3/27/2009
Posts: 30,284
|
This is news? I swore this was common knowledge once 'likes' became available on Facebook. I mean, when you look at someone's page and their likes are Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Basketball Wives, and Madea, you've got a gay on your hands most likely.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 5/3/2012
Posts: 42,099
|
Quote:
Originally posted by aidan_dolan
Well no ****, I mean how many straight guys do you know who likes Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Beyoncé |
A lot of straight guys like Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, and Katy Perry for their looks alone.
|
|
|
|
Member Since: 10/30/2011
Posts: 10,415
|
It's obviously not 100% accurate, but honestly if I click on a guy's profile and all I see is Lady Gaga, Beyonce, etc I will assume he's gay or bisexual.
|
|
|
|
|
|
