Facebook users can be profiled with just their likes

[jos]

They created a computer program that sifted through the Facebook likes of over 85,000 users to see if a person's preferences could rat out their true persona.The researchers made the subjects take a MyPersonality survey to create a baseline, then asked friends and relatives to judge them with a similar survey. The results were surprising -- the computer model could judge someone better than a friend or roommate by analyzing just 70 likes, and do better than a parent or sibling with 150 likes. The average number of likes per user in the study was 227, enough for the computer to evaluate someone better than almost anyone, with one exception: their spouses.

Source :http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/12/facebook-may-know-you-better-than-your-friends-and-family-study-finds/

[Gr8White_Bear]

I figured as much.  That's why I only use Facebook to PM people now.

[LAwLz]

Now imagine how powerful that would be if it also included all the data harvested by Facebook's tracking. Every site you visit which has a "share on Facebook" button reports it back to Facebook, so that they know that you visited that website.

If it can tell who you are so accurately from just your likes, combining your likes and websites visited would make a scarily detailed profile on you.

[shujin]

and now I'm happy to have less than 15 like total

[Sidiox]

This is cool and scary, I want to know what my profile is according to FB

[vorticalbox]

it's a bit stupid that this is even news of course using the things I say I like can be used to profile me.

[jos]

It made its way into Washingtonpost

[shujin]

This is cool and scary, I want to know what my profile is according to FB

would be nice to have this tool open to everyone

[Guest]

Kind of unsurprising.

I don't have a Facebook account, but now I'm wondering how much could be deduced from this forum account.

Probably a lot. I should lie about myself more.

I've been very honest and open about everything up until now.

[Gr8White_Bear]

I guess it can be said about anything online though.  Once you post it, it's already been archived.  There's no taking it back.

[zacRupnow]

[HerEscutcheon]

Geeze, you click 'like' on ONE post about dendrophilia and Facebook decides to classify you as creepy... One time!

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Easy solution : start "liking" stuff you don't like.  Be creative. 

[cooperb21]

Easy solution : start "liking" stuff you don't like.  Be creative. 

Wow that would really fuck there plan.

[snes]

Is this news to anyone? I hate Facebook with a passion and won't use anything that has to do with Zuckerberg and his lackies. But to be fair, anything you do on the internet can be analized.

[SubTract]

has anybody actually tried this?

Apparently I don't have enough likes for it to work.

[Derangel]

Be funny what my likes say about me. Probably that I only like computer hardware or something since I really only like things when I have to for contests.