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Globe's MIT gaydar story wasn't really about something new
By adamg on Fri, 09/25/2009 - 9:00am
Michael McGraw-Herdeg at MIT dissects the Globe's widely disseminated story about the experiment to use Facebook to check somebody's sexual orientation: The story doesn't mention that the experiment was done back in 2007 until 944 words in and the basic technique has been in use for at least six years now:
... Johnson quotes a 2009 conference paper where scientists warn: "Using friends in classifying people has to be treated with care," because the classifications can be weak. Sounds like someone ought to check this against the social-network-terrorist-sniffers whose software has, the [Wall Street] Journal reports, "foiled a Pakistani suicide bombing plot on Western targets and discovered a spy infiltration of an allied government." ...
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Comments
It also failed to note that
It also failed to note that human sexuality is a spectrum, not a gay-or-straight dichotomy. All the program may do is identify some (not all) people's adherence to stereotypical social roles and networks for particular gender socializations. The real story was how ignorant the major media and the average person is about sexuality and gender, and how eager we are to pigeon-hole people.
So....let me get this
So....let me get this straight.....
He figures out that the experiment happened in 2007 -- from the article itself?
Talk about investigative reporting.
Maybe he can also dig up the fact this wasn't in the news section. It was in the Ideas section.
We WILL find you
The article also doesn't touch on the ethical, social and historical baggage of a study meant to "identify which students are gay". Or Jewish, or Republican, or whichever "cell" -- oops, I mean "minority group" -- the researchers might have a particular interest in.
Maybe we could try the same technique to identify the markings, habitats and political affiliations of all the would-be Anons here on UHub, round them up for, you know... "study".