5 ms·

What Our Digital Footprint Says About Us

32 points by yarapavan 11y ago

joshelway 11y ago
The way we each approach and interact with social media does say a lot about us. However, as in my case, and im sure others here would agree, I generally prefer to not interact with social media by actively liking or sharing things. I merely observe, I use the social media tools that allow me to connect and reconnect with others, but I believe that the onlooker or the analyst that tries to derive information from my likes and dislikes, will ultimately come out empty handed. So this indeed says a bit about me, but I may be entirely different from another fellow "observer" of social media who also doesn't actively like or share.
OliverJones 11y ago
Heh heh. So wrong. I'm no androgynous 27-year-old.
- jhaglund 11y ago
  I'm not conservative, 26, or female. It also says I'm smarter than just 49% of the population, while IQ tests say at least 80%. Maybe I'm just good at taking tests and Facebook is the real me?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
caseysoftware 11y ago
It's trivially easy. I built a simple proof of concept a last month with ~30 lines of code: http://caseysoftware.com/blog/social-apis-for-social-evil http://caseysoftware.com/blog/social-apis-for-social-evil
ux-app 11y ago
> Facebook serves one of our most basic instincts: to socialize, gossip, and feel needed I've never had a social media account. Feels strange that I seem to be missing a "basic instinct". Not sure what to make of this.
- jfoutz 11y ago
  Many things serve those instincts, like friends, family, hacker news. You're getting your needs met via other sources.
santaclaus 11y ago
> Sorry, we are unable to generate a prediction. An insufficient number of your Likes match with those in our database, and we don’t believe in guesswork. Huh. I click like a lot on Facebook, I wonder what throws their algorithm off.
ilyaeck 11y ago
Took the test on the website. The results are so off. It couldn't even predict my gender, not to mention other traits. If that website actually reflects their method, it is ridiculously overclaimed.
- methou 11y ago
  My guess is that they just don't have enough data to do very good clustering.
gohrt 11y ago
The whole linked site -- http://applymagicsauce.com/ http://applymagicsauce.com/ just seems deeply unethical for a University, regardless og where it sits on the spectrum of [abuse of human research subjects] to [selling snake oil]
toothbrush 11y ago
> First of all, just being on social media, I believe, makes people happier. Um, no. http://uk.businessinsider.com/social-media-use-can-contribute-to-anxiety-and-depression-2015-6?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/social-media-use-can-contribut... > The same instincts drive us to read celebrity magazines and watch soap operas. Wait, what?

32 points by yarapavan 11y ago

The way we each approach and interact with social media does say a lot about us. However, as in my case, and im sure others here would agree, I generally prefer to not interact with social media by actively liking or sharing things. I merely observe, I use the social media tools that allow me to connect and reconnect with others, but I believe that the onlooker or the analyst that tries to derive information from my likes and dislikes, will ultimately come out empty handed. So this indeed says a bit about me, but I may be entirely different from another fellow "observer" of social media who also doesn't actively like or share.

OliverJones 11y ago

Heh heh. So wrong. I'm no androgynous 27-year-old.

jhaglund 11y ago
I'm not conservative, 26, or female. It also says I'm smarter than just 49% of the population, while IQ tests say at least 80%. Maybe I'm just good at taking tests and Facebook is the real me?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

caseysoftware 11y ago

It's trivially easy. I built a simple proof of concept a last month with ~30 lines of code: http://caseysoftware.com/blog/social-apis-for-social-evil http://caseysoftware.com/blog/social-apis-for-social-evil

ux-app 11y ago

> Facebook serves one of our most basic instincts: to socialize, gossip, and feel needed I've never had a social media account. Feels strange that I seem to be missing a "basic instinct". Not sure what to make of this.

jfoutz 11y ago
Many things serve those instincts, like friends, family, hacker news. You're getting your needs met via other sources.

santaclaus 11y ago

> Sorry, we are unable to generate a prediction. An insufficient number of your Likes match with those in our database, and we don’t believe in guesswork. Huh. I click like a lot on Facebook, I wonder what throws their algorithm off.

ilyaeck 11y ago

Took the test on the website. The results are so off. It couldn't even predict my gender, not to mention other traits. If that website actually reflects their method, it is ridiculously overclaimed.

methou 11y ago
My guess is that they just don't have enough data to do very good clustering.

gohrt 11y ago

The whole linked site -- http://applymagicsauce.com/ http://applymagicsauce.com/ just seems deeply unethical for a University, regardless og where it sits on the spectrum of [abuse of human research subjects] to [selling snake oil]

toothbrush 11y ago

> First of all, just being on social media, I believe, makes people happier. Um, no. http://uk.businessinsider.com/social-media-use-can-contribute-to-anxiety-and-depression-2015-6?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/social-media-use-can-contribut... > The same instincts drive us to read celebrity magazines and watch soap operas. Wait, what?