Facebook’s ‘like’ button can reveal more than you realize, a new study has showed. By liking posts and links, you may be revealing personal secrets, like your sexuality or religious and political views. The findings have raised privacy concerns.
A study by the National Academy of Sciences examined 58,000 Facebook users in the US, who volunteered their likes, demographic profiles and psychometric test results. Researchers managed to draw “surprisingly accurate” findings about a given user’s race, IQ, sexuality, substance use, personality and political views by analyzing the topics and items they ‘liked,’ even if they set strong privacy settings for their page.
The study’s authors developed an algorithm that uses Facebook ‘likes’ to create personality profiles, potentially revealing a user’s personality. Anyone with training in data analysis could be able to derive such information, even if users had not explicitly shared it, they explained.
As a result, researchers were able to predict whether men were homosexual with 88 percent accuracy by their ‘like’ clicks on sites related to gay marriage or same-sex relations. Preferences of music and TV shows, for example, were also more revealing than users may have imagined: Men who liked the musical TV show ‘Glee’ were more likely to be gay, the study showed.
In 82 percent of cases, Christians and Muslims were correctly identified among the volunteer profiles. And the study was not only predictive of sexuality or religion, but also a user’s IQ.
Those with higher IQs tended to more frequently like ‘The Colbert Report’ TV show, for example, or films like ‘The Godfather’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Those with lower IQs liked Harley Davidsons and Bret Michaels of the rock band Poison.
Similarly accurate predictions were also made about users’ political views, and could even predict potential voting patterns during elections, mapped to users’ relationship status, their number of Facebook friends and a half-dozen other personality traits.
“The important point is that, on one hand, it is good that people’s behavior is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed,” South China Morning Post quoted Michal Kosinsky, one of the academics behind the study as saying.
While the study could be seen as a new step towards creating more personalized content, it also highlighted the potential threats to privacy posed by Facebook. “What is shocking is that you can use the same data to predict your political views or your sexual orientation. This is something most people don’t realize you can do,” Kosinsky warned.
Similar profiles could be created using other digital data, including Web searches, emails and mobile phone activity, according to a co-author of the study: “Your likes may be saying more about you than you realize,” David Sitwell, a Cambridge University researcher said, according to AFP. “But you don’t realize that years later all those likes are building up against you.”
Paris and London will call for an early unscheduled EU meeting on the Syrian arms embargo in order to lift the ban. If the union does not end the embargo, the two nations will still arm the Syrian rebels, France said.
“We along with the British will ask for the meeting to be moved up,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, adding that “Lifting the embargo is the only means of moving things on a political level.”
The next meeting is scheduled for May, but Fabius said that Paris and London are attempting to move it forward to before the end of March.
Fabius also warned that France and Britain are ready to arm Syrian rebels without unanimous EU support. If the embargo is lifted, “the resistance fighters [will] have the possibility of defending themselves,” he asserted.
Last month, the EU amended the embargo to allow member nations to supply the Syrian opposition with “non-lethal” equipment and training, but did not lift the ban entirely.
The two countries have repeatedly pushed for an end to the ban: In December, British Prime Minister David Cameron urged an early review and possible lifting of the arms embargo, in order to greenlight the delivery of equipment and supplies to the Syrian opposition.
The EU imposed the arms embargo, and other sanctions, against Syria in May 2011, following two months of conflict in the country. Since then, the union has held several meetings to discuss the possible repeal of the ban, but the embargo has remained in place.
Fabius claimed that since Russia and Iran are sending weapons to Assad’s forces, the opposition has way to properly defend itself.
Iraq strongly denied the accusations: Ali Moussawi, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s media advisor, said on Wednesday that “such a thing never happened. Weapons did not and will not be transferred from Iran to Syria through Iraq, whether by land or by air.”
Russia has insisted that it is only fulfilling contracts it already signed, which includes sending anti-missile air defense systems, not offensive weapons.
Moscow has spoken sharply against supplying arms to the rebels. Any plans to arm the Syrian rebels would violate international law, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday as he met with British Foreign Minister William Hague.
“As for the possibility of arming the opposition, as far as I understand, it is not allowed by international law, that’s why arming of the opposition directly or indirectly will be the violation of the international law,” Lavrov said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry is also opposed to the Syrian rebels’ membership in the Arab League, as this would legalize the supplying of arms to the opposition, including terrorists from militant group Jabhat al-Nusra.
Last week, the league issued a statement offering a seat to Syrian rebels, and that Arab states are free to offer them military support.
This video touches on a very small fraction of the overwhelming sum of physical evidence which explosives of any kind do not explain.
Dear Fellow Truth Supporter,
My name is Abraham Hafiz Rodriguez, and I am a medical student. Throughout my rigorous undergraduate science and medical science coursework, I have had the privilege of receiving extensive training in the process of scientific analysis and evidence-based thinking.
I am writing to you today not only as a medical student, but also as a concerned American citizen, to ask for your help with something very important.
Have you heard of Dr. Judy Wood? Did you know she has been researching 9/11 since 2001 and has already filed several law suits against NIST’s contractors for science fraud, and legal requests that NIST’s fraudulent data gets reexamined? Dr. Judy Wood has received more than one threat due to the research she has done and the evidence she has gathered, and one of her students was also murdered in 2006. Surprisingly, Dr. Judy Wood is the only 9/11 researcher who has submitted evidence to the courts in pursuit of the truth.
I. In 2007, Dr. Judy Wood filed several legal cases against the corporations NIST had contracted to conduct the 9/11 “investigations”, many of which are military / defense / weapons organizations involved in Directed Energy research (huge conflict-of-interest). The filings in these legal cases included Requests For Corrections (RFC) based on the Data Quality Act, and Qui Tam whistle-blower cases. One of her legal cases made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in October of 2009. She has been actively pursuing 9/11 Truth with her lawyer, despite the lack of support she has received from Dr. Steven Jones and other members of the 9/11 Truth community. The legal documents from her court cases can be viewed at the following links:
II. Dr. Judy Wood has collected an overwhelming amount of evidence which suggests that a Directed Energy Weapon of some kind was used to powderize (‘dustify’) the primary steel and concrete portions of the WTC buildings, while burning and bending aluminum, yet leaving paper and many other materials unharmed. These characteristics are matched by those of “The Hutchison Effect”, and are the result of “field effects” and energy interference. John Hutchison has filed an affidavit in Dr. Wood’s court case, to legally testify to the numerous similarities between The Hutchison Effect and the 9/11 attacks.
III. Dr. Judy Wood received her B.S. (Civil Engineering, 1981) (Structural Engineering), M.S. (Engineering Mechanics (Applied Physics), 1983), and Ph.D. (Materials Engineering Science, 1992) from the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her dissertation involved the development of an experimental method to measure thermal stresses in bi-material joints. She has taught courses including: Experimental Stress Analysis, Engineering Mechanics, Mechanics of Materials (Strength of Materials), Strength of Materials Testing.
IV. Here are some very important video documentaries discussing the reality of The Hutchison Effect and other suppressed technologies, such as Cold Fusion, Anti-Gravity, and Military Energy Weapon Technology, which are related to 9/11:
It’s funny how quickly perceptions can change on the global stage. Just a few years ago, Argentina was being hailed as a remarkable tale of success snatched from the jaws of defeat. After suffering an economic crisis in 1999-2002 that saw widespread unemployment and riots, the fall of the government, and a national default on foreign debt, analysts in recent years have been pontificating on the re-stabilization of the Argentinian economy. But it appears they spoke too soon. Find out more about the Argentinian inflation crisis and the country’s latest struggle with the IMF in this week’s edition of The Eyeopener report.
Bavaria is the latest province to be caught up in a wave of European separatism triggered by Scotland and Catalonia. Widely considered Germany’s economic powerhouse, politicians there insist they would be better off as an independent state. RT’s Peter Oliver looks at how far Bavaria is ready to go.
RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
PANDA (People Against the NDAA) Oregon marches against indefinite military detention, the application of the laws of war on U.S. soil, and secret arrests.
The PANDA (People Against the NDAA) Mission Statement:
Our Mission is to nonviolently nullify, strike down, repeal, stop, void and fight the indefinite detention provisions, Sections 1021 and 1022, of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2012, to fight for American civil liberties, to combat laws restricting liberty in the interest of National Security, to support current government officials that are doing so and to engage a younger generation in the politics of the United States so this cannot happen again.
Super-sized aggressive mosquitoes with a ‘stabbing’ bite are set to be unleashed across Florida this summer, bringing misery for thousands of residents.
In what could have come from a B-list Hollywood film script, the floodwater mosquito is nearly 20 times its normal-sized cousins, can strike either day or night, its eggs can lie dormant for years – and the mosquito might even be tolerant to repellents And it’s all thanks to recent storms flooding coastal areas of the sunshine state, which paved the way for the mega-sized biters to call Florida their home. Just when you thought genetically modified mosquitoes were the worst we had to face.
The real threat of a surge in the large insects known as gallinippers came off the back of last summer’s Tropical Storm Debbie, a storm responsible for flooding in many parts of Florida and unleashing the gallinippers. The gallinipper lays eggs in soil close to ponds, streams and other water bodies that overflow when heavy rains come. The eggs can remain dry and dormant for years, until high waters cause them to hatch.
And it’s that scenario which has led to entomologists issuing alerts to local residents on the best ways to avoid getting painful bites this summer amid concerns that bumper squadrons of the gallinippers could strike again.
On their presence this summer, Phil Kaufman, University of Florida entomologist, said: “I wouldn’t be surprised, given the numbers we saw last year. When we hit the rainy cycle we may see that again.”
PN 