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

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

See All Reviews »

Review

Cara Uy
4.1
by Cara Uy - Sep. 21, 2009

This was a good story to report on because it relates to the hot topics of privacy and social networking. The piece is clear and informative in reporting the story; however, it could have included more about how the social networkers felt about "Project Gaydar." By including the reactions the LGBT community, I believe it would have added more to the argument of how it raised new questions about online privacy.

See All Reviews »

Cara's Rating

Overall
4.1

Good
from 11 answers
Quality
4.0
Facts
4.0
Fairness
3.0
Sourcing
4.0
Style
4.0
Context
5.0
Depth
3.0
Enterprise
4.0
Relevance
4.0
Popularity
4.5
Recommendation
5.0
Credibility
4.0
More How our ratings work »