Facebook Likes Can Be Used to Guess at Your Intelligence, Sexual Preference

No shit, really?

Simply by delving into volunteers’ Likes, the researchers could determine in 95 percent of cases whether a person was Caucasian or African American and in 88 percent of cases whether the person was heterosexual or homosexual. They could determine whether the person is Christian or Islamic 82 percent of the time.

Well blow me over with a feather.

Person of Interest had a funny exchange about this. Finch is brilliant, mysterious blackest-of-black-vaults NSA computer/surveillance technologist who's invented a computer so powerful at extracting and analyzing data it can actually predict crimes 48 hours before they occur; Reece is his CIA partner/pointman.

FINCH: This person has no digital fingerprint whatseover. No social media presence at all. Most people put a lot of their lives on social media now.

REECE: We used to love those people, back in the CIA. Social media always made it easy for us to find them.

FINCH: I know, that's what I invented it.

REECE: What? You're saying you invented social media?

FINCH: It was too difficult trying dig all this data out of people. I realized it would be easier just to have everyone volunteer it.

posted by Ace at 08:17 PM

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