Watch out! You may be outted on Facebook. MIT students claim that they can tell which guys are gay by checking out their friends on Facebook.
Students created an algorithm that first analyzed networks of people who publicized their sexual orientation on Facebook. Then they looked at men who did not state their sexual orientation on Facebook, but looked at their network of friends. Guess what? Gay men have more gay friends than straight men. Someone had to create a program to figure this out?
Popsci.com reports:
“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.)”
What I find the funniest is that the students completed the project for a class on ethics and the Internet. Didn’t anybody ask whether it was ethical to pry into somebody else’s private life when they obviously don’t want to state their sexual orientation?
Kari Girarde
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the ethics part is the more interesting component considering that there is no secret to any queer here — yet, like the previous post, the use of the internet has devolved into the invitingly fetid appearance of the tasteless TV dinner noted. after all, in overall consciousness relative to the collective usage of the Internet — it reminds me (on average) of drunk drivers. amusing but sad that many people are humored by that. having worked with various groups on large scale sites, the contemporary development of the Internet is the antithesis of what the Matrix was addressing and worse (in a sense). thanks.