In a study published this week, and sure to rekindle Facebook’s privacy fire, researchers have shown that Facebook users unknowingly reveal everything about themselves through their Likes.
Funded by Boeing and Microsoft Research, the study shows that Facebook can be used to accurately predict a wide range of personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, political views, personality traits, substance use, and age and gender. . It can even tell investigators whether or not your parents were separated when you were 21.
The average person has 170 likes on their profile and demonstrates how looking at the basics of the information a person provides online develops an automatic and accurate estimate of what that person is like.
Although the same could be said when looking at a person’s Google history, web browsing, or Twitter subscriptions, the only difference here is that Facebook Likes are currently publicly available by default.
58,466 volunteers participated in the study by providing their Facebook Like data obtained through a Facebook application.
The study was able to correctly predict whether:
- 95% of the cases were African American or Caucasian American.
- 93% of the cases were women or men.
- 82% of the cases were Christian or Muslim.
- 67% of the cases were single or in a couple.
- 73% of the cases were smokers or not
- 65% of the cases were drug users or not
- In 60% of cases, the users’ parents separated when they were 21 years old or not.
He goes on to show how personality traits were a bit more difficult to accurately predict and could only predict correctly:
- The emotional stability of users in 30% of cases
- The opening of users in 43% of cases
- Life satisfaction of users in 17% of cases
To explain the lower accuracy of the ‘life satisfaction’ trait, the researchers say, it’s hard to separate long-term happiness from different mood swings on Facebook.
People post less when they’re happy, but give them something to complain about and they’ll go off like a rocket.
It also showed that people who liked ‘Hello Kitty’ tended to be high in Openness and low in Emotional Stability.
They have created a website where users can try out what personality traits looks like for themselves at youarewhatyoulike.com.
With a Facebook “Like” button adorning nearly every website (and growing), it can be hard to avoid the lure of clicking. I like it to express your feelings.
Interestingly, the study demonstrates how tastes and individual traits correlate. For example, they found that the best predictors of high intelligence include “thunderstorms,” ”curly fries,” and “The Colbert Report.” Good predictors of male homosexuality were ‘No H8 Campaign’, ‘Mac Cosmetics’ and ‘Wicked the Musical’. Liking ‘Britney Spears’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ was considered moderately indicative of being gay, while people who liked ‘Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps’ were more likely to be straight men.
It will be interesting to see, going forward with this study, if companies start to use it to tailor their ads and services more to the individual rather than the whole, and how the release of this study will further the debate on privacy in the digital age.
