Project "Gaydar"? Really?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 by Jon Meoli
Published in Sunday's Boston Globe, the article Project 'Gaydar': An MIT experiment raises new questions about online privacy tells of two students' research project in which they "trained" a computer to look at three Facebook attributes (gender, "Interested In," and friend lists) to determine whether or not the list of friends can successfully determine one's sexual orientation. Using the formula gleaned from this, they examined subjects who did not list an "Interested In," and all 10 cases in which they knew the subject was a gay man were confirmed by their formula.
While the theory was largely unsuccessful on women and bisexuals, it's a step in a frightening direction. Not only must we be worried about what we say and do on the Internet, but now that which is left unsaid and truly meant to be private can be gleaned from our online profiles. The article goes on to talk about more of what we've covered - that advertisers and employers are working to use systems such as this to make guesses about people, and that privacy is becoming a big issue on the Internet. Of course, we all know this now, but the article seemed very relevant.