5 ms·

Researchers Learned to Use Facebook ‘Likes’ to Sway Your Thinking

108 points by nreece 9y ago

weego 9y ago
I mean, the article covers the research and all so maybe I'm just out of my depth... but I can't help feeling like there's a fair bit of tech astrology going on here.
- kdelok 9y ago
  I went to uni with the guy who didn't share his stuff with Cambridge Analytica (Kosinski). He presented the likes -> OCEAN analysis and it was pretty compelling (and frightening) stuff. In particular, with enough likes, it could deduce things such as gender, race and sexual orientation. Obviously in the wrong contexts, this information is extremely sensitive.
  - AznHisoka 9y ago
    Gender and race doesnt seem very farfetched. You can get halfway there with just the name of a person. Add location and you’re almost there.
    - EB-Barrington 9y ago
      FYI - I should have added, my name was never given, nor was any other "personal" information. Nothing more was provided other than a paragraph of text I had previously written, the contents of which had nothing to do with me personally.
      - vbo 9y ago
        They might've extracted useful information from your IP address/geolocation or your useragent, ie maybe figuring out you're accessing the site from tech company X's network. Given tech companies ratio of male to female employees, they may have been able to infer you are male. Also, tech companies pay well, so that's another information nugget about you, etc. The more signals they have, the more precise the outcome.
        EB-Barrington 9y ago
        Yes, agree. So I should add, just for discussion: 1) I'm self employed. 2) I'm always connected via a VPN connected to a continent that isn't my home continent. 3) I haven't connected to the internet via a "company" network in over five years. I could infer that you are male from the way you type, and I guess you're somewhere between 25 and 35. I haven't looked up your username or anything else, it's just a "feeling". Given millions of paragraphs of text linked to millions of known demographic and other data points (provided by Facebook), a paragraph is all a well-tuned system would need to make quite accurate assumptions about the person who typed the paragraph. Again, likes are not required anymore.
        RyanZAG 9y ago
        > I could infer that you are male from the way you type, and I guess you're somewhere between 25 and 35. I haven't looked up your username or anything else, it's just a "feeling". I think you only really need one or two obvious tells for something like that. The guy you replied to used ", etc.". I think that alone puts him into the bracket you've given, so I'm fairly sure you're correct here. Looking forward to hearing if you are.
        vbo 9y ago
        You could also do sentiment analysis on your dataset and link it to likes. Basically the more signals you have the more you can narrow down your classifications or correlations. Btw, your inference is correct. Course, one could argue that it is informed by 25-35 males being one of the most common demographics on HN.
  - EB-Barrington 9y ago
    I remember posting a random paragraph of text I had previously created into an "analyser" on the Cambridge Analytica website - as an alternative to giving Cambridge Analytica access to my FB profile. It then accurately deduced my gender, race, sexual orientation, age group, and other key data - all from a single paragraph. No "likes" required anymore.
    - laretluval 9y ago
      Would it have been inaccurate for you if it was just guessing based on base rates?
  - pacala 9y ago
    OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits.
    - narrowingorbits 9y ago
      *Conscientiousness
      - pacala 9y ago
        Fixed, thanks!
  - mc32 9y ago
    Maybe the "genius", if it can be called that was FB only allowing likes, rather than dislikes. You have to really agree with something to like it, as the default is to not react, and when you do react, most energy is to disapprove of something (for example, negative feedback, online reviews, etc.), so if someone gives something positive feedback it must have nonmarginal significance. That said, the conclusions are very much expected. If i know what you like, i can know what kind of person you might be.
- vbo 9y ago
  Not necessarily. It should be fairly straightforward to build correlations like "People who like Breitbart are likely to vote Trump" (and less obvious ones) to help target specifically crafted ads to the people who are most likely to respond positively to them. It's not rocket science, but effective. Basically demographics on steroids.
  - AznHisoka 9y ago
    Isnt this just simply marketing/targeted advertising? There is no voodoo or psychographics going on here. Honestly, I think people are giving Cambridge way too much credit. I have seen enough overblown promises in the big data, AI, <insert buzz word> industry to know people just make things sound more innovative than it really is.
    - verylittlemeat 9y ago
      I agree with you. People seem to be equating a political profile and targeted advertising with a brain ray that makes people pull the lever for a funded candidate. Just to take one high level example: Facebook was still "thefacebook" and closed to the public by the time George W. Bush was elected to the white house for a second term. How can we honestly winkwink/nudgenudge a "stolen election" at the feet of facebook or CA when clearly liberal politics were defeated in 2000/2004 with standard political rhetoric? Why are we giving facebook/CA credit for having so much political power? I hate to use such a broad lens for the recent incident and I hope I'm communicating what I'm intending to here. I just don't see how somehow this incident "changed everything" or even changed much of anything when you look at the history how campaigns get people to vote for their candidate. People don't want to hear this but targeted memes didn't make people anti-abortion or pro-nazi or whatever conserative boogey-man you pick. Conservative voters are people not a pathology. You may not like their views or the way they vote but this whole "people who don't think the way I do are brainwashed" thing has to go. You're buying that argument at your own peril because conservatives aren't going anywhere.
      - queerfeminist 9y ago
- finnthehuman 9y ago
  I can't help feeling like there's a fair bit of tech astrology going on here Perfection is a red herring, as long as it's more accurate than the alternatives people will want to use it.
- blablabla123 9y ago
  Or maybe tech combined with astrology. FWIW in retrospect I'm happy that already years ago I stripped my Facebook account to the bare minimum
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
thomasahle 9y ago
The like to Ocean numbers in the article are quite interesting, even if a bit predictable. One thing that surprised me though was that neuroticism was least correlated with all things sports? LEAST NEUROTIC “SportsCenter” TV show ESPN TV network Derrick Rose athlete Miami Heat sports team Football sport This seems to suggest that either neurotic people are somehow uninteresting in sports, or that sports are really good helping you not be neurotic. Maybe the later is predictable as well, but that nothing else is as anti-correlated with neuroticism is still surprising to me.
- ahartmetz 9y ago
  That is very interesting indeed. While I believe that causality is more in the other direction, one could speculate that sports fandom is a social activity that lets people act out some ancient instincts that are otherwise suppressed in modern civilization - mostly for good reasons.
- dfxm12 9y ago
  When was the data gathered (I know the article says they were published in 2015, but that's different)? I could think of a time, around 2012, specifically before Rose injured his knee, when Miami Heat and Derrick Rose fans were not very neurotic. I don't think "sports are really good helping you not be neurotic", but I can see how rooting for a good team might be.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    I wonder if it would be the reverse. Bandwagonning the current best team could be correlated with being non-neurotic. You don't have your personal identity tied up in it, you just like seeing great players do great things. There is something crazy about investigating significant amounts of emotion and energy into rooting for a team with very poor odds of winning... (says me, who's as guilty as anyone).
jrimbault 9y ago
For curiosity's sake I'd like to see what such models could deduce about me personnally. Google ads and Amazon don't seem particularly apt to deduce who I am. Last time I checked what ads google was serving me, it was all woman lingerie and services to Londoner expat living in Paris. I'm a young french man living in Paris, without any particular interests in lingerie, I've been to London once 10 years ago. I'd qualify myself as fitting in the norm of young CS students.
- allthenews 9y ago
  >I'd qualify myself as fitting in the norm of young CS students I say this in total seriousness, and with no ill intent: based on a number of CS twenty-something males that I've met in the Valley and Seattle over the last couple years, an unusual interest in lingerie is not necessarily that inaccurate of a prediction... Which doesn't entirely surprise me anymore. Competent, self taught hackers tend to represent the upper tail of intelligence, and it seems to me that having such interests from a young age correlates with a number of unusual and perhaps less than socially acceptable interests. Which would probably be influenced by a lifetime of trouble "fitting in", something I suspect is a disproportionately familiar experience to many of us on HN.
- the-dude 9y ago
  > without any particular interests in lingerie That is what you think.
- JoeDaDude 9y ago
  > it was all woman lingerie... They don't know you, but they know your subconscious
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
oblib 9y ago
I've been running the "Data Selfie" plug-in on Firefox for a bit over a week now. It's pretty interesting. Right now it says: "You're a laid back, liberal female who doesn't eat out frequently and doesn't prefer style when buying clothes and is less satisfied in life than most". It also says: Not likely to like outdoor activities Not likely to consider starting a business in next few years I am a male who has been self employed most of my life, and a moderator on one of the busiest "Backpacking Forums" here in the US. So it's got that wrong, but it's true I have very little interest in "clothes style" and don't eat out much. The "female" part is especially interesting because I'm very much a straight male, but I was a single parent with a 1 year daughter 30 years ago and I did make a very conscious effort to be a "mom" to her. That required I learn some very feminine traits like "kissing boo boos" and nurturing with hugs and kisses and lullabies. I learned how to do these things by closely observing real moms, and asking them for help, or getting my ass chewed by them when I was "doing it wrong". At the time friends and family were fairly astounded the first few times they saw me go instantly into "Mom" mode when my daughter required my attention. And, I haven't posted anything, or made any comments about either food or clothes. I can only assume it's my lack of doing that which prompts the conclusions regarding it but I was honestly unaware that others must do that enough to make my not doing it somewhat remarkable. So, in that very short time period (9 hours on FB) the plugin has made some pretty insightful conclusions and missed the mark on some as well. For example, I've been a hiker almost since I could walk and almost all of my hiking over the past 25 years has been off trail "bushwhacking" into Wilderness areas and most of that has been solo. But, I rarely ever mention my hikes or my work on FB, so again, it would seem to be the lack of those that prompts the algorithm's conclusions. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dataselfie/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dataselfie/)

108 points by nreece 9y ago

I mean, the article covers the research and all so maybe I'm just out of my depth... but I can't help feeling like there's a fair bit of tech astrology going on here.

kdelok 9y ago
I went to uni with the guy who didn't share his stuff with Cambridge Analytica (Kosinski). He presented the likes -> OCEAN analysis and it was pretty compelling (and frightening) stuff. In particular, with enough likes, it could deduce things such as gender, race and sexual orientation. Obviously in the wrong contexts, this information is extremely sensitive.
- AznHisoka 9y ago
  Gender and race doesnt seem very farfetched. You can get halfway there with just the name of a person. Add location and you’re almost there.
  - EB-Barrington 9y ago
    FYI - I should have added, my name was never given, nor was any other "personal" information. Nothing more was provided other than a paragraph of text I had previously written, the contents of which had nothing to do with me personally.
    - vbo 9y ago
      They might've extracted useful information from your IP address/geolocation or your useragent, ie maybe figuring out you're accessing the site from tech company X's network. Given tech companies ratio of male to female employees, they may have been able to infer you are male. Also, tech companies pay well, so that's another information nugget about you, etc. The more signals they have, the more precise the outcome.
      - EB-Barrington 9y ago
        Yes, agree. So I should add, just for discussion: 1) I'm self employed. 2) I'm always connected via a VPN connected to a continent that isn't my home continent. 3) I haven't connected to the internet via a "company" network in over five years. I could infer that you are male from the way you type, and I guess you're somewhere between 25 and 35. I haven't looked up your username or anything else, it's just a "feeling". Given millions of paragraphs of text linked to millions of known demographic and other data points (provided by Facebook), a paragraph is all a well-tuned system would need to make quite accurate assumptions about the person who typed the paragraph. Again, likes are not required anymore.
        RyanZAG 9y ago
        > I could infer that you are male from the way you type, and I guess you're somewhere between 25 and 35. I haven't looked up your username or anything else, it's just a "feeling". I think you only really need one or two obvious tells for something like that. The guy you replied to used ", etc.". I think that alone puts him into the bracket you've given, so I'm fairly sure you're correct here. Looking forward to hearing if you are.
        vbo 9y ago
        You could also do sentiment analysis on your dataset and link it to likes. Basically the more signals you have the more you can narrow down your classifications or correlations. Btw, your inference is correct. Course, one could argue that it is informed by 25-35 males being one of the most common demographics on HN.
- EB-Barrington 9y ago
  I remember posting a random paragraph of text I had previously created into an "analyser" on the Cambridge Analytica website - as an alternative to giving Cambridge Analytica access to my FB profile. It then accurately deduced my gender, race, sexual orientation, age group, and other key data - all from a single paragraph. No "likes" required anymore.
  - laretluval 9y ago
    Would it have been inaccurate for you if it was just guessing based on base rates?
- pacala 9y ago
  OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits.
  - narrowingorbits 9y ago
    *Conscientiousness
    - pacala 9y ago
      Fixed, thanks!
- mc32 9y ago
  Maybe the "genius", if it can be called that was FB only allowing likes, rather than dislikes. You have to really agree with something to like it, as the default is to not react, and when you do react, most energy is to disapprove of something (for example, negative feedback, online reviews, etc.), so if someone gives something positive feedback it must have nonmarginal significance. That said, the conclusions are very much expected. If i know what you like, i can know what kind of person you might be.
vbo 9y ago
Not necessarily. It should be fairly straightforward to build correlations like "People who like Breitbart are likely to vote Trump" (and less obvious ones) to help target specifically crafted ads to the people who are most likely to respond positively to them. It's not rocket science, but effective. Basically demographics on steroids.
- AznHisoka 9y ago
  Isnt this just simply marketing/targeted advertising? There is no voodoo or psychographics going on here. Honestly, I think people are giving Cambridge way too much credit. I have seen enough overblown promises in the big data, AI, <insert buzz word> industry to know people just make things sound more innovative than it really is.
  - verylittlemeat 9y ago
    I agree with you. People seem to be equating a political profile and targeted advertising with a brain ray that makes people pull the lever for a funded candidate. Just to take one high level example: Facebook was still "thefacebook" and closed to the public by the time George W. Bush was elected to the white house for a second term. How can we honestly winkwink/nudgenudge a "stolen election" at the feet of facebook or CA when clearly liberal politics were defeated in 2000/2004 with standard political rhetoric? Why are we giving facebook/CA credit for having so much political power? I hate to use such a broad lens for the recent incident and I hope I'm communicating what I'm intending to here. I just don't see how somehow this incident "changed everything" or even changed much of anything when you look at the history how campaigns get people to vote for their candidate. People don't want to hear this but targeted memes didn't make people anti-abortion or pro-nazi or whatever conserative boogey-man you pick. Conservative voters are people not a pathology. You may not like their views or the way they vote but this whole "people who don't think the way I do are brainwashed" thing has to go. You're buying that argument at your own peril because conservatives aren't going anywhere.
    - queerfeminist 9y ago
finnthehuman 9y ago
I can't help feeling like there's a fair bit of tech astrology going on here Perfection is a red herring, as long as it's more accurate than the alternatives people will want to use it.
blablabla123 9y ago
Or maybe tech combined with astrology. FWIW in retrospect I'm happy that already years ago I stripped my Facebook account to the bare minimum
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

thomasahle 9y ago

The like to Ocean numbers in the article are quite interesting, even if a bit predictable. One thing that surprised me though was that neuroticism was least correlated with all things sports? LEAST NEUROTIC “SportsCenter” TV show ESPN TV network Derrick Rose athlete Miami Heat sports team Football sport This seems to suggest that either neurotic people are somehow uninteresting in sports, or that sports are really good helping you not be neurotic. Maybe the later is predictable as well, but that nothing else is as anti-correlated with neuroticism is still surprising to me.

ahartmetz 9y ago
That is very interesting indeed. While I believe that causality is more in the other direction, one could speculate that sports fandom is a social activity that lets people act out some ancient instincts that are otherwise suppressed in modern civilization - mostly for good reasons.
dfxm12 9y ago
When was the data gathered (I know the article says they were published in 2015, but that's different)? I could think of a time, around 2012, specifically before Rose injured his knee, when Miami Heat and Derrick Rose fans were not very neurotic. I don't think "sports are really good helping you not be neurotic", but I can see how rooting for a good team might be.
- majormajor 9y ago
  I wonder if it would be the reverse. Bandwagonning the current best team could be correlated with being non-neurotic. You don't have your personal identity tied up in it, you just like seeing great players do great things. There is something crazy about investigating significant amounts of emotion and energy into rooting for a team with very poor odds of winning... (says me, who's as guilty as anyone).

jrimbault 9y ago

For curiosity's sake I'd like to see what such models could deduce about me personnally. Google ads and Amazon don't seem particularly apt to deduce who I am. Last time I checked what ads google was serving me, it was all woman lingerie and services to Londoner expat living in Paris. I'm a young french man living in Paris, without any particular interests in lingerie, I've been to London once 10 years ago. I'd qualify myself as fitting in the norm of young CS students.

allthenews 9y ago
>I'd qualify myself as fitting in the norm of young CS students I say this in total seriousness, and with no ill intent: based on a number of CS twenty-something males that I've met in the Valley and Seattle over the last couple years, an unusual interest in lingerie is not necessarily that inaccurate of a prediction... Which doesn't entirely surprise me anymore. Competent, self taught hackers tend to represent the upper tail of intelligence, and it seems to me that having such interests from a young age correlates with a number of unusual and perhaps less than socially acceptable interests. Which would probably be influenced by a lifetime of trouble "fitting in", something I suspect is a disproportionately familiar experience to many of us on HN.
the-dude 9y ago
> without any particular interests in lingerie That is what you think.
JoeDaDude 9y ago
> it was all woman lingerie... They don't know you, but they know your subconscious

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

oblib 9y ago

I've been running the "Data Selfie" plug-in on Firefox for a bit over a week now. It's pretty interesting. Right now it says: "You're a laid back, liberal female who doesn't eat out frequently and doesn't prefer style when buying clothes and is less satisfied in life than most". It also says: Not likely to like outdoor activities Not likely to consider starting a business in next few years I am a male who has been self employed most of my life, and a moderator on one of the busiest "Backpacking Forums" here in the US. So it's got that wrong, but it's true I have very little interest in "clothes style" and don't eat out much. The "female" part is especially interesting because I'm very much a straight male, but I was a single parent with a 1 year daughter 30 years ago and I did make a very conscious effort to be a "mom" to her. That required I learn some very feminine traits like "kissing boo boos" and nurturing with hugs and kisses and lullabies. I learned how to do these things by closely observing real moms, and asking them for help, or getting my ass chewed by them when I was "doing it wrong". At the time friends and family were fairly astounded the first few times they saw me go instantly into "Mom" mode when my daughter required my attention. And, I haven't posted anything, or made any comments about either food or clothes. I can only assume it's my lack of doing that which prompts the conclusions regarding it but I was honestly unaware that others must do that enough to make my not doing it somewhat remarkable. So, in that very short time period (9 hours on FB) the plugin has made some pretty insightful conclusions and missed the mark on some as well. For example, I've been a hiker almost since I could walk and almost all of my hiking over the past 25 years has been off trail "bushwhacking" into Wilderness areas and most of that has been solo. But, I rarely ever mention my hikes or my work on FB, so again, it would seem to be the lack of those that prompts the algorithm's conclusions. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dataselfie/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dataselfie/)