Gay and on Facebook? New Gaydar Software Can Out You, Private Profile or Not
What You Must Know About Facebook Privacy Settings
Gay on Facebook: Can Your Boss Find Out?
Leave it to the Boston Globe to drop this bombshell: if you are a closeted gay and on Facebook, a Gaydar software program developed at MIT can out you. You already know that there is the little setting in the profile, where you can specify if you are interested in men or women; it goes without saying that if you are male and self identify as being interested in men, it will not take a software program to connect the dots.
That being said, the software in question can determine if you are gay, even if you self identify as straight or decline to state. Moreover, the only info that the software needs is the sex and sexual orientation of your friends, even if you have your profile set to private. While this software is not yet commercially available, it stands to reason that if a couple of MIT students can cook it up, it is only a matter of time before you can download it as freeware. So yes: if you are gay and on Facebook, your boss could find out.
Reliance on Facebook Privacy Settings Undermined by Friending Habits
The methodology is surprisingly simple: a gay man on Facebook tends to friend more gay men than a straight man would. It is not rocket science but it should come as a warning to any gay man, who is terrified of being outed. While there is a lot to be said on the pros and cons of being open about one's sexuality, the fact that some choose to keep it under wraps is a decision that deserves respect. When this decision can be undermined simply by an analysis of the virtual company you keep, it prompts the question what else your Facebook reveals about you ... and to whom. By the way, it is interesting to note that the MIT software did not out lesbians or bisexuals.
Friending, Gaming and Joining
Now that gay men may be outed by software, does the same hold true for political affiliations or potentially questionable pastimes? As the Boston Globe points out, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas discovered that the groups you join on Facebook and also your favorite music are quite indicative of your political leaning. It is only a matter of time until clever marketers will begin mining social networking data for gender, age, and income specific marketing. Thereafter, it could be the politician in need of support, the school seeking to identify the most successful students, or the scammer looking for the most gullible marks.
Thus, if you are a joiner and also have personal tastes displayed on your profile, you are providing more information about yourself than you might care to. Do not forget that there is also the risk of misidentification, especially if you are a gamer. If you enjoy Vampire Wars or Mafia on Facebook, you know that in order to really make it up the ranks, you need to grow your clan or family to at least 500 members. Unless you have that many personal friends playing the game, the odds are good that you are friending strangers. Who knows what they - and their contacts - are suggesting about you, even if it is not true? Could this adversely affect your employment chances?
Straight or Gay on Facebook: Privacy Settings You Must Know
Even though a reliance on Facebook privacy settings might not be 100% effective, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. If you want to keep your gay identity private, group your gay friends into their own friends list and apply heightened privacy settings to this list. The same holds true for your politically active friends, your churchy buds, or any other affiliation from which you want to officially disassociate yourself.
Next, make sure that no photos of you become visible to friends and family members. When you visit your Facebook profile privacy page, take note of the "photos tagged of you" section and select the "only me" and "none of my networks" options.
Last but not least, if you are a gamer and thus have copious "friends," your Facebook wall will soon get cluttered with their daily - sometimes hourly - antics. If some of your "friends" like to advertise their stripper names or discuss the latest boxing match in terms that are sure to cause grey hairs to any racially sensitive boss, limit their visibility on your wall. Prevent anyone from seeing what is posted there.
Of course, if your boss is your friend on Facebook, all bets are off...
Published by Sylvia Cochran - Featured Contributor in Automotive, Politics, Travel and Lifestyle
Sylvia Cochran works out of sunny Southern California and has been freelance writing -- full-time -- since 2005. SEO-optimized Internet copy includes news analysis, political Op/Ed and parenting as well as a... View profile
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8 Comments
Post a Comment... Sometimes they choose a "straight-friendly" gay pub as a location for social evenings. A program that makes guilt by association out of chances of social life like this, is bigotry.
I'm straight, but socially libertarian, meaning I feel oppressed by all prejudices that say, outside sex, that some life choices are gay and straights are not allowed to choose them. This results discriminatorily in straights being more oppressed and less free than gays. e.g. wearing pink clothes, not liking football. Will this propgram libel straight folks as gay for reasons like this? and by driving women away from them, actually help to perpetuate singleness as a false gay indictor?
I belong to a very liberal freethinking Anglican church. It is a very fulfilling worthwhile piece of social life for the thinking person, far nicer and more moral than conventional churches with all the nasty threatening beliefs they have. but these features also result in this church being popular with gays. Hence, I have Facebook friends of both genders, who are members of that church, who are nothing to do my sexuality, and lots of them are gay. Sometimes they choose a "straight-friendly&
I feel like this is horribly inaccurate! To judge someone's sexuality based on the gender and sexual orientations of their friends sounds absurd to me. This is generalizing way too much. Plus, who exactly would be using this program?
Talk about invasioon of privacy. Nothing is safe anymore.
Insightful. Also how inappropriate, but most people are going to use any public information to their advantage.
This puts me in mind of another MIT related internet issue, the bonsai kittens, although this particular project obviously has much more serious implications as well as potential for misidentifying a person as gay, activist, evangelical or whatever.
It seems that a program like this loses much of its power over us as individuals & as a society when we begin to appreciate one another without caring about such affiliations, whether it be in a social, educational or professional setting.
Sad for those who felt their privacy was not at risk. Excellent write-up!
I have a few friends on FB who are gay. I do check profiles of friends and some of them shocked me with what they chose for being interested in. This new Gaydar program just reinforces that there is no such thing as privacy anymore.