You Are What You Like
So, I was browsing the news channels as I normally do when I'm bored and want a fact-finding binge, when I stumbled upon this:
Basically, it was a study conducted by Cambridge University which investigated the extent to which "liking" something can describe your personality. The full report can be found here, if you enjoy reading data.
But essentially to summarise, this is what it found from 58,000 Facebook users:
- The algorithm model was able to determine African Americans from Caucasians 95% of the time.
- Gay men were able to be identified 88% of the time.
- They were able to discern Democrat and Republican 85% of the time.
- Drug use, somehow, was determined 65% of the time.
- Even more bizarrely, they could tell whether or not a person's parents were divorced by the time they were twenty-one. It's quite astounding with a 60% success.
Besides being quite amusing, according to the news article, it also shows how social media is increasingly being used for analytical stuff and tracking data. By liking something on Facebook, the adverts you get on the side are similarly tailored to you. For example, being an 18 year old student, I often get driving instructor ads and other "young people" stuff that I'm not into.
The entire point of this thread is to essentially ask you what sort of things do you like? Do you like anything and everything? Do you never like? Do you even use Facebook?! Of course, feel free to have a comment on the whole privacy issue surrounding social media as well.
And I leave you with this. It's a small little thing where you log in to Facebook, and it reads your likes and tells stuff about you. It's not as thorough as the Cambridge study, but it's amusing anyway.
facebook stats.png
Why, I'm blushing
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Originally Posted by That stupid article
Master of the Fork
