Computers know you better than your friends Your Facebook Likes provide a signal to your personality so accurate, a computer can know you better than everyone but your very nearest and dearest, claim Cambridge boffins. In a study published at PNAS (abstract here, PDF here), the researchers used Facebook Likes as the signal to model a computer-based “personality …
Oh how could they! It's like they don't know me at all. :(
Wait, what?
They use Facebook likes? I don't understand; Facebook likes what?
Huh, a like is what I like on Facebook. But I don't do Facebook so it should be clear that I don't like anything Facebooky.
Oh, now I see. I guess they really do understand me after all, bless their little hearts.
"RealLife ≠ commenting on El Reg*"
Unless you are providing RealLife input. e.g., "≠" != "!=".
Eddy Ito's meta input in that post is valid RealLife information, unlike nearly[1] all twits, faces, tubes, goos, etc.
[1] For an infinitesimally small variation of "nearly". Unless you are a multi-billion dollar international marketing organization looking to sell massive quantities of the general public's personal information to the highest bidder, of course.
The ability to judge personality gather personal information is an essential component of social living media sites—from day-to-day decisions to long-term plans such as whom to marry, trust, hire, or elect as president what ads you are likely to click on to finding new ways to track and monetize your every move.”
Fixed that for him.
Will "recruiters" therefore soon start using Quizony or Bitecharge to dodge tricky questions? Score 8/10 on "Do you remember who said these 80's TV catchphrases"- okay, so you're not likely to be 20-something, etc. Sounds like this paper was funded by whoever is behind those quizgasmtastic companies, trying to gouge cash ("monetise") from the vast amount of trivia they have already been given...
The definition of the statistical procedures they're doing here (factor analysis, so they're asking if the regression slopes are statistically different from 0 between the items and a shared commonality between the items, called the latent factor[s]), combined with the fact that they're publishing, means that these results are predictive. The personality factors measured here aren't quite `likes open spaces, but only before 17:00' but the Big 5: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, and scores on them, as calculated from covariances between the 100 observed items in the test itself, do predict a fair amount. Lots of gene and personality links, authoritarianism (Bob Altemeyer's right wing authoritarianism/ Jost's cognitive flexibility). Not predictive to the extent that HR consultants sell them as though, and my personal past time has been quizzing them on how they work. Blank stares are pathetically common, and they just don't understand that just because they establish a test amongst grocery bag packers, doesn't mean that the same qualities are universally beneficial for statisticians, or sysadmins.
As for whether anything that can be meaningfully predicted is either useful or relevant is more of a judegement call.
So-called "social networking" is just a gigantic data mining scheme, looking to leverage the computer and security and privacy illiterate GreatUnwashed's ignorance.
Even back in the Fido & early Usenet days, the computer literate knew better than to post personal data for all the world to read.
The Internet was not built to securely share little bits of info between friends, rather it was built as a research network to research networking, with very little security. We built it to SHARE everything we were doing online, not SECURE it.
If you wouldn't want to shout it from the rooftops, don't do it online. This includes banking and purchasing. The network just wasn't built for that kind of activity.
In The Future (tm), recruiters will only interview candidates that correspond to their corporate culture. The Police will use predictive analysis to follow people more likely to commit infractions. Insurance companies will tailor premiums to your social rating. Entire neighborhoods will only accept newcomers if their Facebook Profile Indicator is in a range corresponding to their own tastes.
And everyone will be automatically subscribed to Facebook at birth by law.
But what of those people who exhibit anti-social behavior (i.e. not being appreciative of this wonderful, safe, cosy environment provided by the Bureau of Governmental Statistics), you ask ?
Why do you ask that ? You don't want to be a burden for your friends and family, now do you ? Of course not. You will now be transferred to a Social Reeducation Facility of your choice for processing. Be seeing you !
If we step away from FB Likes and start doing in depth analysis of social media postings, I'm afraid that the computers would decide that humanity had failed as a species, form SkyNet and wipe us out to protect the planet. I mean really, some of the tripe we've seen posted (and reposted) of late indicate that the ambient intelligence of the species is now dropping at an alarming rate.
I don't "Post your results on facebook" or "like this page to read this article", and I do have several relatives and actually intelligent friends that keep in touch there ... but I don't participate in the marketing culture.
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