Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Facebook "Gaydar" Algorithm Can 'Out' Users

A new Algorithm has been shown to have some success figuring out if a Facebook user is gay even if that user has not given any indication as such. It is referred to as 'Gaydar Algorithm' and is actually relatively simple. Analyzing Facebook users who made their sexual orientation public, they found that gay men statistically had more gay friends then strait men had gay friends. The algorithm does not appear to work as well for bisexuals and woman. No hard statistics calculated, but the important take away is the implication. The implication is that people are revealing much more about themselves on line then they may know.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/gaydar-algorithm-outs-facebook-users

"A pair of MIT students claim that they have created an algorithm that outs gay members of Facebook by analyzing the sexual orientations of their networks of friends.

The students first analyzed the networks of people who publicized their sexual orientation on Facebook. Turns out that statistically speaking, gay men have more gay friends than straight guys do. So then, they used an algorithm to run the stats on men who kept mum about their sexual orientation on the site. Their computer program was able to correctly identify 10 men whom the students personally knew to be gay in the real world but who hadn't shared that fact on Facebook. (The algorithm didn't work as well with women or with bisexual Facebookers.)
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