RSSYou are what you Facebook ‘like’
Mar 14
Research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows patterns from these Facebook preferences can provide surprisingly accurate estimates of your race, age, IQ, sexuality and other personal information.
The researchers developed an algorithm which uses Facebook likes – which are publicly available unless a user chooses stronger privacy settings – to create personality profiles, potentially revealing a user’s intimate details.
These mathematical models proved 88 per cent accurate for differentiating males from females and 95 per cent accurate distinguishing African-Americans from whites.
The algorithms were also able to extrapolate information such as sexual orientation, whether the user was a substance abuser, or even whether their parents had separated.
This data can be used for advertising and marketing, but it also could make users cringe because of the amount of personal data revealed, the researchers said.
“It’s very easy to click the ‘like’ button, it’s seductive,” said David Stillwell, a psychometrics researcher and co-author of the study with colleagues from the University of Cambridgeand Microsoft Research.
“But you don’t realise that years later all those likes are building up against you.”
Stillwell says that while Facebook data was used in this study, similar profiles could be produced using other digital data including web searches, emails and mobile phone activity.
“You can come to the same conclusions with many forms of these digital data,” he says.
The study examined 8,000 US Facebook users, who volunteered their likes, demographic profiles and psychometric testing results.
While some of the patterns appeared obvious – Democrats like the White House while Republicans liked George W. Bush – others were less direct.
Extroverts liked actress and singer Jennifer Lopez, while introverts gravitated toward the film The Dark Knight. Those determined to be “liberal and artistic” liked singer Leonard Cohen and writer Oscar Wilde, while conservatives preferred Nascar racing and the film Monster-in-Law.
The predictions relied to a large degree on inference, by aggregating huge amounts of data: those predicted to be homosexual were tagged as such not because they clicked on sites about gay marriage, but because of their preferences in music and TV shows, for example.
Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82 per cent of cases, and good prediction accuracy was achieved for relationship status and substance abuse, between 65 and 73 per cent.
People with high IQs more frequently liked The Colbert Report television show and films including The Godfatherand To Kill a Mockingbird.Those with lower IQs preferred Harley Davidsons and Bret Michaels of the rock band Poison.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/03/12/3713455.htm
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