Project ‘Gaydar’: An MIT experiment raises new questions about online privacy

Boston Globe by Carolyn Y. Johnson | Sep. 21, 2009 (Special Report)
At MIT, an experiment identifies which students are gay, raising new questions about online privacy

Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their ... Full Story »

Posted by Kaizar Campwala - via MuckRack, Boston Globe

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Derek Hawkins
2.9
 by Derek Hawkins - Sep. 21, 2009

The Globe covers a mildly interesting project by two MIT students that purports to predict a person's sexual orientation based on their Facebook friends. The pedantic language of this story is annoying and it would be a stretch to call it somewhat relevant. Makes me wonder what other more fascinating, more important projects are going on at MIT and aren't getting ink.

Gasp! You mean if I put information about myself online it might not be private? Glad the Globe's around to dissect these things for me.

Lots of redundancies in this paragraph. Could have been cut down to one or two quick sentences.

If our friends reveal who we are, that challenges a conception of privacy built on the notion that there are things we tell, and things we don’t.

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