She likes my tone, my cologne, and the way I roll
Click by click, Facebook users are building a surprisingly nuanced picture of themselves, even without filling out their social networking profiles. […] Researchers found that they could, for example, correctly guess a man’s sexual orientation 88 percent of the time by analyzing the kinds of TV shows and movies he liked. It also found that few gay men — less than 5 percent in the study — identify with groups that openly declare their sexual orientation, so a man’s preference for “Britney Spears” or “Desperate Housewives” was more useful in predictions.
Similarly, the researchers also found that they could figure out if a Facebook user used drugs with about 65 percent accuracy based on their expressed public preferences.
The study even included “like” predictors that could tell whether users’ parents had separated when they were young vs. whether they had not.
Researchers told the British paper that they hope this study raises users’ awareness about the kind of information they may not realize they’re sharing with a wider audience.
