I want to shed a little "lyte" on sexual orientation. Do you use social networks, like Facebook or MySpace? Be careful, you might be giving out more information about yourself than you think. No, I am not talking about those pictures of you in your shower, I am talking about really private information, like who you like to have sex with.
Leave to a couple of brainiacs at MIT to come up with a way to predict sexual orientation using your Facebook profile. They used a person's friend list, gender, and "interested in", and trained a computer to spot trends. And guess what, gay men have more gay men friends. But it gets interesting when they used the software on profiles of students they knew where gay, but hadn't "outted" themselves. The software predicted that these students were gay, 100% of the time. Oh, and they named the software program "Gaydar".
Now, this software only worked with gay men. Bisexuals, gay women, apparently have a more diverse friends list. (My assumption, not theirs) But still, it has to give you pause. Our buying patterns are tracked at the grocery store. Our voting habits are tracked by political parties. Now my sexuality could be tracked? Is nothing sacred?
A whole new field of analysis has opened up, thanks to the expansion of social networks. And even if you don't post revealing information about yourself, you may be revealing more than you want. Sociologists are having a field day doing statistical analysis on these networks.
So, take a long look at your friend's list, people. It might say more about you than you think.
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