So the University of Cambridge says that they can predict things about you from your Facebook postings, even if those postings don’t reveal the information. Color me unimpressed.
They claim that they can predict a male’s sexual orientation with 88% accuracy. Yawn. At best, 90% of males are heterosexual, meaning that I can beat their numbers merely by calling all men heterosexual. It isn’t as if I can’t guess the sexual orientation of a guy who posts pictures of himself kissing other dudes, or of a woman who looks like a man, with short hair and her arm around another woman.
Likewise for the claim that they can predict religion and political leanings. If I click the ‘like’ button on the NRA page, the Pope’s page, and the page for Rush Limbaugh, it is a safe bet that I am not a Democrat.
The thing that bothers me the most is that this study was likely done with tax dollars. This is why we are broke.