Evan Daniel ?????:
> On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:06 PM, VolodyA! V Anarhist
> <Volodya at whengendarmesleeps.org> wrote:
>> Matthew Toseland ?????:
>>> On Monday 12 October 2009 09:54:05 VolodyA! V Anarhist wrote:
>>>> http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/gaydar-algorithm-outs-facebook-users
>>>>
>>>> A pair of MIT students claim that they have created an algorithm that outs
>>>> gay
>>>> members of Facebook by analyzing the sexual orientations of their networks
>>>> of
>>>> friends.
>>>>
>>>> The students first analyzed the networks of people who publicized their
>>>> sexual
>>>> orientation on Facebook. Turns out that statistically speaking, gay men
>>>> have
>>>> more gay friends than straight guys do. So then, they used an algorithm to
>>>> run
>>>> the stats on men who kept mum about their sexual orientation on the site.
>>>> Their
>>>> computer program was able to correctly identify 10 men whom the students
>>>> personally knew to be gay in the real world but who hadn't shared that
>>>> fact on
>>>> Facebook. (The algorithm didn't work as well with women or with bisexual
>>>> Facebookers.)
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> It'd be interesting if it's possible to make similar observations without
>>>> seeing
>>>> the whole map of the network, but only of the particular person.
>>>> Regardless,
>>>> this is yet another reason to dislike WoT.
>>> Only if WoT gives an option to publicly specify your sexual orientation! ;)
>> True, thus WoT should never be used for anything which allows you to say
>> anything about yourself that can be associated with WoT identity.
>>
>>> And are you ranting against darknet here or only against chat/etc WoT apps?
>> No, i was not ranting against darknet or only against chat/etc WoT apps.
>>
>> - Volodya
>
> How is this different from ranting about people engaging in the
> horribly insecure practice of replying to messages they find
> interesting? You can build the same basic graph structure, and
> analyze it in the same manner, merely from the messages. The WoT only
> makes it slightly more convenient, at worst.
>
> Evan Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Devl mailing list
> Devl at freenetproject.org
> http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
Let me try to understand what you are saying. Basically you mean that a reply
to
the message can be used in the same way to 'link' identities as 'friends' as
any
social network would. So the premise would change from 'gay people tend to have
more gay friends' to 'gay people reply to more messages of other gay people'.
I must say that on the common-sense level i do agree with you in respect to the
fact that one can make such an observation, but i'd expect the difference to be
more than 'slight'. Especially for the people who make their trust lists public
(those who filter according to how much they agree with the poster) responding
to more of somebody's messages does not imply that they will up that person's
trust level.
- Volodya
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