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Simón.

If you like Lady Gaga, you are likely gay, says Facebook

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Just a few Facebook likes can identify users' sexual orientation or political and religious beliefs, a study has shown.

US researchers found that as few as three likes on the social network can be the difference between advertisers being able to identify users as gay or not for targeting purposes. This was the case even when users had deliberately withheld such information from Facebook.

They proposed that social networks introduce a "cloaking system" that allows users to prevent such inferences being drawn against their will, even when they are accurate.

The information that Facebook holds on its users has often revealed personal information that people might be uncomfortable with the social network knowing.  This includes contact information shared by others, location data, and browsing history.

But the social network also characterises users based on what pages they have liked, a key indicator of their interests. Previous research has shown how Facebook likes can reveal our personalities, but this study shows that it only requires a few likes to be hidden to stop these portrayals.

The authors wanted to work out how likes can identify traits including sexual orientation, IQ, whether they smoke or drink, political beliefs and religious beliefs.

They found that fewer than eight likes were typically needed to distinguish between a person being confidently identified as one of these traits, and not identified. 

For example, liking pages for Lady Gaga, the Human Rights Campaign, the TV show True Blood and Harry Potter are likely to mean Facebook identifying someone as gay. Such inferences are increasingly being used by advertisers as consumers become more wary of giving away information.

 

https://www.google.de/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/11/21/just-handful-facebook-likes-can-used-tell-gay-straight/amp/

 

 

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35 minutes ago, Can't Come Up With A Name said:

Fuck studies like this. Why are they always researching ways to identify and hunt down gays? sass4

They're not trying to identify gays specifically, but various ad target groups

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