Predicting Characteristics of People by the Company they Keep
Turns out “gaydar” can be automated:
Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep.
This sort of thing can be generalized:
The work has not been published in a scientific journal, but it provides a provocative warning note about privacy. Discussions of privacy often focus on how to best keep things secret, whether it is making sure online financial transactions are secure from intruders, or telling people to think twice before opening their lives too widely on blogs or online profiles. But this work shows that people may reveal information about themselves in another way, and without knowing they are making it public. Who we are can be revealed by, and even defined by, who our friends are: if all your friends are over 45, you’re probably not a teenager; if they all belong to a particular religion, it’s a decent bet that you do, too. The ability to connect with other people who have something in common is part of the power of social networks, but also a possible pitfall. If our friends reveal who we are, that challenges a conception of privacy built on the notion that there are things we tell, and things we don’t.
EDITED TO ADD (9/29): Better information from the MIT Newspaper.
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mat • September 29, 2009 7:57 AM
As interesting as this is, I fear that such statistical analysis can ultimately be used against people, be it for some sort of witch hunt or character assassination. Couple this with the fact that people on facebook typically just add any person they find as a friend. Casual acquaintances, people you had a class with, random people you meet in bars, etc.