Your Online Profile Actually Tells a Lot About You 272
An anonymous reader writes "Despite all the media reports that your Facebook profile is giving the wrong impression, a psychological study shows people really can understand your personality from your online profile. Turns out you're not giving the wrong impression with your profile; you're giving the right impression to the wrong people. You can actually learn more about someone's Agreeableness from their online profile than from a first date."
Duh (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
The only remotely suprising thing was that women were both easier to understand and understood people better through profiles.
For me it isn't, but maybe just 'cause I'm a girl who's spent far too much time in heavily female online communities. I think it's just an extension of how people work in the real world; women, just by generally being more communicative (not being sexist so much as that's what most studies find), drop more hints, and probably 'cause they drop so many know what to look for.
Re: (Score:2)
I knew all of those years of playing Final Fantasy would pay off one day.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, but when they talk they tell you things if you know how to parse the string-drop this chatter, highlight that word 'cause of intonation, flip those two, etc,. Men are similar, (and studies suggest they talk just as much as women), but the parsing works a bit differently.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)
That's a design flaw in your parser-it should know to recognize "-" as the preface to a new dependent clause.
My sig is ADD+sparkles, so I'd be surprised if it didn't make people go cross eyed.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you have confused a hyphen with an em-dash.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, see my response to the ac above. I wonder why I've never been called on it before, guess open office or word corrects for it or I've got lazy professors.
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Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)
Well, perhaps it's because you're a woman, and you *did* say 'string-drop'. Which gets me all flustered and confused.
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sorry, too used to using - for an em-dash 'cause I can't even find an em-dash on my laptop.
Re: (Score:2)
Recovering graphic designer and typesetter here. The poster is right, you should use an em dash to separate dependent clauses but when it's not possible (in plain ASCII text e-mail messages, for example), it's acceptable to use two hyphens (--) in it's place.
Re: (Score:2)
How about a hyphen within spaces - like that?
Sheesh.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I got my tech-writer job based not only on the quality of my experience on my resume (put little lines above the e's for me), but also because I used En-dashes in my date ranges ;-)
Please tell me where you got your job because I might want to send my résumé there, that is, if I resume looking for tech-writing jobs. As you can see, I'm sure to get a job.
Those "little lines above the e's" are accent marks— in this case, acute accents. The character entity is, naturally enough, é.
The emdash is an acceptable a substitute for semi-colons, but also for commas— yet I have never heard of, nor can I imagine, using an emdash as a substitute for a colon. Th
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Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to think their vocal chords are connected neurally to the parts of their brain that think whereas men can think without their vocal chords moving.
I tend to think that men use their vocal chords as a secondary tactic after "Hulk Smash!" Women are physically smaller, so they can't generally get their way through force. Women have to manage with what they have: negotiation. If women simply point out mens' failings, men start pounding their chests to demonstrate their dominance. Who needs a brain or tact when might makes right? Case in point... [slashdot.org] Behold: pedantic dweebs berating what is probably the only woman on /. for failing to use the — code to produce a — symbol. Thanks to their quick actions, the female is quieted and they can resume wanking it and flaming each other to assert their dominance on the internet's biggest sausage party.
Generalize much? :P (Score:5, Insightful)
"Negotiation" is one way to put it. In practice, you get a whole gamut ranging from outright submissive, to (rarely) threats of violence. I know at least one who's pretty proud that her negotiations with her late husband were along the lines of "you do thing my way, and I won't bash your head in." With various shades in between, that include:
- nagging. Literally pointing those perceived failings out again and again and again, until hopefully you get the idea that chest thumping doesn't work anyway.
- manipulation.
- indirect threats and manipulation. There are a couple of whole cultures where a woman's only power was gained by, for example, manipulating her sons against their father. Or I only have to look at my own deranged family, where grandma manipulated mom and dad against each other, and my mom tried more than once to manipulate me and my brother against each other. (Thankfully though, she's such a socially inept nerd, that it was just funny to see her try.)
- annoying passive aggression
- basically, "if you don't do as I say, you're getting no sex"
Etc, etc, etc.
Basically, _some_ women are nice, and _some_ are nasty in various ways. Sociopathy/Psychopathy exists in women too, not only in men, for example. Four times fewer, yes, but that's far from zero.
Note that I'm not especially vilifying women here. I'm just saying that there's a whole range of them, ranging from saint to Antichrist, so to speak. From Mother Theresa to such fine gals as Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandl, and Elisabeth Volkenrath, who led the women's camp at Auschwitz. IIRC Maria Mandl alone ordered the death of _half_ _a_ _million_ women. She was known as "The Beast" and also known to have people killed for as little as looking at her. Or Ilse Koch, The Witch of Buchenwald. Now that's a sadistic gal.
In other words, cute, but as false as all blanket generalizations.
Again, spare me the blanket generalizations, please.
The grammar/spelling/punctuation trolls are a rather tiny group of trolls. Annoying and visible, yes, but in no way representative for a whole gender.
So, anyway, you found one message from one of those retards. And he was answering to a woman. Whop-de-do. They do that to anyone, and to each other.
How's that representative for males as a whole?
In fact, I'll go on a limb and say that most people on Slashdot, male or female, look down upon that group of retards. Most of us aim upwards, not find some "look, someone typoed a 5 letter words that I knew!" claims to glory. It's only when you're near the bottom of the proverbial barrel, that "look, there's someone (arguably) lower than me!!" starts looking like some claim to glory. Some people just are that low, have no achievements worth bragging about, and are building their sole claim to glory out of such "OMG, you typoed a 5 letter word that I know how to spell! You must be more stupid than me!!!" lameness. It's not even pedantry, it's being a worthless loser and knowing it. Nothing more.
Re:Generalize much? :P (Score:5, Funny)
"OMG, you typoed a 5 letter word that I know how to spell! You must be more stupid than me!!!" lameness. It's not even pedantry, it's being a worthless loser and knowing it. Nothing more.
Everyone knows it's "typod". It's 5 letters, not 6. Dumbass.
Ah, this is going to be one to tell my grandkids in The Sims. How they will laugh and admire me :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that online physical might has no relevance whatever, and people on slashdot pick up on spelling, punctuation and grammar all the time, so I think the fact that she was a girl had nothing to do with the actual punctuation trolling.
More likely the amount of attention she is getting is because any girl posting on slashdot is intellectually attractive, and geeks just want to talk to her (at least until they see a picture of her, though maybe she's pretty, who knows :p ). I posit that in this case, most
Re:Talking without communicating?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Communication operates at many levels.
You may agree that the specific subject is a subject of "low importance". However, what they are engaging in is building the conext of communication, which is a signal "I am here for you, sharing my time with a Null topic, and I am available if you have something more difficult to discuss."
Men often use the heuristic that such material "worsens the noise-signal ratio". At the extremes, you get taciturn men whose entire speech for the day is "Your wall's burning."
To be entirely fair, though (Score:4, Insightful)
To be entirely fair, though:
1. I have seen extreme cases where the talk included no intention of communicating anything whatsoever.
2. It was by men too.
The most pathologic case I've seen was one co-worker who just couldn't shut up. Literally. You could go out of the office and hear him still talking in an empty room.
But to illustrate why I say that communication was not the purpose: I've had him come to me once to ask about what one of my methods did. The talk went sorta like this:
Me: "Well, that's easy. Let's look at this data object, 'cause that's what tells it what to do..."
Him: "Oh, I get it, it takes the user name and cross-references it in the other table and..."
Me: "Err...nope..."
Him: "... and then the contract number is put in an XML used via Wally's module and..."
Me: "No, that's not..."
Him: "... and then it prints stuff on the screen..."
Me: "Dude, you came to ask me. Please _listen_."
Him: "Yeah, but just to see if I got it right."
Me: "No, you got it all wrong. It's not printing anything yet, and..."
Him: "Oh, I get it. The user name is..."
Me: "Stop! Here it's for logging purposes _only_!"
Him: "... and then it's the other table that stores the rest of the info..."
I get annoyed at this point, go outside to smoke a cigarette. I take my time. I hear him faintly, still talking. I go back inside, he's still parked next to my desk, talking.
Him: "... and then I thought the chip was fried, but it turns out I just had to download new video drivers. But I had already reinstalled Windows, so I had to download all game patches all over again..."
I remember I needed some clarification from another guy on a totally unrelated matter. I was planning to write an email, but wth, let's see him in person. I leave Mr Chatterbox there and go talk to that other guy for some quarter of an hour. I come back, wouldn't you know it, he's still talking. I think he was up to what happened in his vacation.
It wasn't just signal-to-noise ratio. He just wasn't interested in anything I had to say about that module, or generally about anything. He just needed to ventilate his tonsils.
Ok, now that one was a pathologic case, and I'm not saying that anyone else is literally like that. (Hopefully;)
It does however make me think. I don't think most talks happen because we genuinely need to know something, or communicate something. Sure, it's inevitable that some information is exchanged too, even when it's useless and promptly forgotten. But that's not the purpose. The purpose is just to fill one's time.
Or to put it otherwise, look at Slashdot. How many people do you think are in this thread because they genuinely need to know about what you can infer from online profiles? How many are here genuinely to impart valuable expert knowledge? No, most of us are here simply to waste some time. The information exchange may exist, but it's more like side-effect than real purpose of the exercise.
Heck, in a lot of cases the actual topic isn't even side-effect, it's a mean to an end. The end being to have that Null conversation. See how many people watch football or whatever sport, just to have something to talk about at the pub the next day. They're not exchanging information about football, the information is just some extra effort in order to have a talk.
We're wired to need to _do_ something. Otherwise we get bored. And for some people (both men and women) talking is a way to not get bored. Nothing more.
And if I'm to get even more cynical, here's a parting thought: in a lot of cases the real information exchanged is neither the thing discussed, nor then "I am here for you, sharing my time with a Null topic, and I am available if you have something more difficult to discuss" message. I'm getting the impression that in a lot of cases the only real information is "let's see if you still pay attention to me" or similar.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to be a few new studies that simply find that women want to talk, not communicate.
It's more subtle than that. Men tend to communicate mainly ideationally, in other words what they communicate is straightforward facts contained directly in the words. Women are much more inclined to communicate phatically, which is to say that the direct meaning of the words is less important, but the nature of the utterance is communicating a lot about relationships. So when women talk they are communicating, but when men look at the simple meaning of the words they are sometimes looking in the wrong place to find the communication.
Key words in this posting are, of course, "tend", "inclined" and "sometimes".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're probably a Sagittarius like me. We all think astrology is crap.
Of course this assumes that when you filled it out (Score:5, Insightful)
you were being completely honest. I know that I certainly would never think to put a fake age, fake name or fake job when I fill out a profile online. ...nosireebub.
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe you are just way to busy spamming slashdot and raiding Sunwell (or whining on the AoC forums) to care about some stupid MySpace/Facebook page.
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Speaking of details, you think that's her real hair color? That her skin really looks like that? That she's that height? Those are her real nails? That she's acting interested because she likes you, not your wallet?
Boy, you're gonna get burned.
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:5, Insightful)
The fake answers are just as interesting in some ways. When I see a fave album list that looks too carefully constructed (that perfect mix of obscure and popular, with those two horrible but the entire planet loves songs) that tells me as much about the person as an honest list would.
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:5, Funny)
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You're my soul mate? I like the pretentious stuff everyone says they like but nobody really does, the popular stuff nobody wants to admit to liking, and everything in between. (Well with respect to movies more so than music.) I figure most people are like that. It's all in that mix and the stuff you choose to highlight.
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What's the nope in response too? I'm sort of failing to see where we disagree. I agree with you that quality doesn't impact taste in the least, but I've seen a lot of online profiles that don't want to admit that. (It tends to be a certain type of people who have those profiles, which is why they're important even while being untrue, but still.)
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And it's times like these that I feel totally lost and confused in this world.
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:5, Funny)
That is why on the NYT registration page I am a 16 year old female attorney from Afghanistan named Osama Bin Laden. Honest!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Will you go out with me?
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:5, Funny)
That just tells me you're a pathological liar with a fetish for far-west Asian teens and extreme hatred of the US government.
And you also read the NY Times.
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:4, Interesting)
That's pretty much it. I spent a great deal of my time creating fake information about me that makes me look favorable for possible employers. According to the bits and pieces you find about me online when you enter my name in a search engine I'm an accomplished freelancing game creator, writing articles for a local newspaper, who spends his spare time as a volunteer with the fire brigade, and so on.
Actually, I have written a few games but hardly anything to write about, never wrote for a paper (I was doing computer maintainence for them, which must have somehow made me an editor...) and the last time I saw a fire department from the inside was in my youth (I'm just still on their roster, despite me moving away from there about 15 years ago).
Let's be honest here, employers assume that you lie on your CV. So they start looking for other sources of information about you, the the easiest is to run your name through Google (provided you're not John Smith or similar). That they're actually using it can be seen in my mailbox.
Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the bits and pieces you find about me online when you enter my name in a search engine I'm an accomplished freelancing game creator, writing articles for a local newspaper, who spends his spare time as a volunteer with the fire brigade, and so on.
Plug my name into Google and of the at least half dozen people in North America with the same name as me, a semi-famous comedian fro Colorado fills the first several pages of hits. Once on slashdot I made this same point, and one poster, sure he had found my true identity, posted the address and phone number of some poor schmuck from Canada who had the same name as me.
Anyone who uses Google to find out about a prospective employee is incredibly stupid, and there's no way I would work for a fucktard like that. I mean, who wants to be unemployed in only six months when the firm goes bankrupt after having your blood pressure raised daily by an idiot who is dumb enough to think they can find you using the internet?
-mcgrew
Maybe not (Score:2, Informative)
I think most people would give out information like this, even or especially when they use fake names and birthdays.
Just another case of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just another case of... (Score:4, Interesting)
Right and the peacock unfurls its huge tail without realizing the full ramifications either.
A lot of animals do silly or risky stuff to try to show off to potential mates.
The people using facebook, myspace etc are no different.
If some grey suit doesn't hire some girl just because she or someone posted a pic of her half naked and drunk on facebook, despite her proven skills in the line of work, she's probably better off working elsewhere.
Other bosses might just hire people who'd make their company a more fun place to be in.
Now if you see that person has a big problem with alcohol (there might be other clues or signs) then sure don't hire.
I agree (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You should have payed attention to the fact that "Lola" was listed as her favorite song in her profile, (and read her blog post about anally raping unsuspecting men).
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
and thereby, most surely, are a target market.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Seeing how you just revealed a potential vulnerability about your company's personnel - namely, that they are unlikely to have much to do wi
lightweight article (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
> to clarify my post - the difference with facebook is that you have to use your real name
Just as a matter of idle curiousity, how do they know your real name?
Re:lightweight article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:lightweight article (Score:5, Interesting)
As you said, though, it does come down to whom you befriend on Facebook - your real life friends, your online friends or a combination.
Interesting (Score:2)
I set up a profile at classmates.com, but it really just contains a "puzzle encrypted" email address and a picture (not of me) from hotchickswithdouchebags.com [hotchicksw...hebags.com] to add a little je ne sais quoi.
The In-security Blanket (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really surprising just how much we disconnect ourselves from our many social inhibitions when communicating over the internet versus when we're actually interacting with others in public, even when we're fully aware that the internet is far less private than physically going outside to any real-world, public location. On a sub-conscious level, mere text on a screen is somehow far less threatening to us than seeing another person or hearing their voice, even though the opposite is probably more true. (Likely due to the lengthy delay in reaction to our own actions, in addition to severely limited feedback accompanying those reactions.)
Perhaps if we retired text communications in favor of real-time teleconferencing, where you actually have to see who you're talking to, you'd see people become a lot more careful about what they say and do on the internet from day to day.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The In-security Blanket (Score:5, Funny)
It's really surprising just how much we disconnect ourselves from our many social inhibitions when communicating over the internet versus when we're actually interacting with others in public
I know what you mean: I'm naked while typing this.
Re:The In-security Blanket (Score:4, Funny)
I shudder to think where you work.
Re:The In-security Blanket (Score:4, Funny)
I shudder to think where you work, at 10PM, on a Sunday.
Re:The In-security Blanket (Score:4, Interesting)
Our intuitions about safety don't work because there may be nothing to trigger our alarms.
My advice to minors about posting personal information is to ask themselves whether they'd be OK with having the creepiest person in the neighborhood see it. The creepiest person online is obviously a lot worse, but the creepiest person in the neighborhood is a concrete concept that their brain's safety module has already sized up.
Gold star for you (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gold star for you (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Quit misusing the word "Antisocial". Antisocial means you're a psychotic criminal who harms people or goes against society. The word you want is "Asocial".
Re: (Score:2)
Who says Facebook users can't be both?
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Uh, I think you may be messing up subset with equality.
So notation: If a(b) then b is a subset of a:
anti-social(anti-social personality(sociopath(psychopath)))
Some people who are anti-social have anti-social personality disorder, but the average delinquent is anti-social and may very well not have a disorder. A sociopath is someone who has anti-social personality disorder, but not all sociopaths are psychopaths. Some of 'em are very successful business men. The psychotic who harms people or goes against soc
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite-a psychopath isn't grounded in reality, whereas a sociopath may be. I didn't put psychosis anywhere in my heirarchy 'cause I know it isn't. (A schizophrenic has psychotic episodes, but often isn't a psychopath.)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It, along with sociopathy is an obsolete term for what the DSM-IV classifies as antisocial personality disorder.
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Oops, sorry about that. I give up. It's like one wrong for every half right, and that's just disappointing 'cause once upon a time I knew my psych better than this.
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The word you want is "sociopathic".
"You saw it! That orphanage attacked me first!" (http://www.lfgcomic.com/ [lfgcomic.com] )
Re:Gold star for you (Score:5, Funny)
So you've figured out from my facebook page that I'm an antisocial loser with no social skills.
It was only a hunch until you posted on Slashdot as well.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
HOLY CRAP; are you some sort of detective?
DUH... That's what my profile says, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
No, it says youre a millionaire real estate tycoon in dubai.
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
That's funny. I don't even have a Facebook profile. It's a rather lame thing to have. I prefer to do my 'social networking' in the real world.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
_Psychology Today_ LIVES! (Score:2)
I bet these guys believe in the MMPI, too.
I'm sorry; I can't go out with you. (Score:5, Funny)
An analysis of your posting history shows too many "Informative" mods and not enough "Funny". I'm looking for someone a little less serious-minded, someone who's not afraid to risk a "Troll" mod in the spirit of adventure.
So that's why... (Score:2)
I should remove the bloodninja [bash.org] quotes from my facebook profile. No wonder I don't get any dates :'(
You won't learn about me from my online profiles (Score:2)
I made up the whole Orion Blastar space pirate ninja from 4096AD profile to use to be anonymous on the Internet and not allow anyone to learn anything about me, long ago.
If you think I am really Orion Blastar, I got the Brooklyn bridge to sell you really cheap. Because you are the most gullible person alive if you actually think my online profiles are true and not fiction.
Re:You won't learn about me from my online profile (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, we know a few things about you. One, that you like space fantasy fiction, at least somewhat. Also you're a computer oriented geek, because you chose a power of two for the year (4096). Geeks know their powers of 2 forwards and backwards.
Rand(om) but somewhat applicable (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.
Re: (Score:2)
Ill shoot.
I find power and intelligence sexually attractive. Looks are second, third would be money. My current gf is quiet and reserved, yet has a powerful seductive evil streak. That's something I encourage her to bring out more.
So, what's my philosophy on life?
Re:Rand(om) but somewhat applicable (Score:4, Funny)
I'll bite: You are a pasty teenage boy with an unconscious sexual desire for your mother.
You desire a lower slashdot id because you believe that will give you more status, but you haven't one because you spend your time posting to male dominated, english language forums and surfing porn.
;)
Your philosophy on life is a cross between an advertisement for a breakfast cereal and a science fiction space opera.
You believe trolls are a higher form of evolution.
Summary incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
This paper is not about Facebook. It's about a Facebook personality-assessment app ("YouJustGetMe") that allows people to do a personality self-assessment, then create a profile with the app based on likes and dislikes. This "YouJustGetMe" profile would then appear on the user's Facebook profile.
So the research question is not "Can people assess others' personalities based on their Facebook profiles," but, rather, "Can people assess others' personalities based on their own assessments of their own personalities," a very different thing. It then looked for interrater agreement between the writer of the profile and the viewer of the profile.
This is a salient point because what is revealed in a real Facebook profile is very little, and can actually be nothing (like mine--I just use it to keep tabs on my friends strewn around the world who use it). It's totally uncontrolled. The researchers addressed this by placing much tighter controls on the profile creation, limiting it to personality-specific items.
The research is still interesting, but not as interesting as the Slashdot summary makes it sound. It does, however, seem to have some major selection flaws (not a random sample), but I can't seem to load the paper to check on that.
Re:Summary incorrect. --Caveats (Score:5, Informative)
Finally got the paper to download. It's interesting, and was obviously a very serious study that required a lot of work. Good on them for that.
But the mean interrater correlation is 0.41, meaning that it only explains about 17% of the shared variance. This looks to me like another psych study that mistakes statistical significance for practical significance.
To put it another way, there was really only an average of 17% agreement between rater and writer in their assessments. What this study finds is that judging people based on their profile, while not completely useless, isn't very useful.
To put it another way... It's basically just as you would assume: You can get an idea of what someone is like based on what they present about themselves, but the picture is going to be far from complete.
So, let's rename this Slashdot article correctly: "Your Online Profile Actually Tells a Little About You!"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To put it another way... It's basically just as you would assume: You can get an idea of what someone is like based on what they present about themselves, but the picture is going to be far from complete.
Ahhhh psych studies. Using statistics to prove the bleeding obvious, and earning a living at it. Where do I sign up?
Lies... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yuhhuh (Score:5, Funny)
You can actually learn more about someone's Agreeableness from their online profile than from a first date.
A statement only Slashdot readers could believe.
Of Chickens and Men (Score:5, Insightful)
All chickens are taken to slaughter, but they still have to spend their chicken-energy.
Facebook is a great big behavioral data collection engine which is perfectly suited for the monitoring and control of millions. Is it used this way? I don't know. I suspect there is far more data gleaned from our collective lifetimes spent traveling through the education and medical systems, and in adulthood, through the banking systems, than is collected from facebook. --And those other systems are either run directly by the government or are tightly intertwined with government, whereas Facebook is still somewhat private. Though I can certainly see how something like Facebook sheds light into areas which those previously mentioned systems have a harder time quantifying, namely your associations with other people. (Though, that kind of thing is not invisible; there are phone records and email records; Facebook just kind of collects it all with a nice GUI for the MIB's.)
However. . , it's still a system which binds friends and communities together. Much like the phone system. --You're not going to stop using the phone to call your parents or friends just because you KNOW the government is recording everything in paranoid anxiety.
Yeah, humans are hopelessly manipulable, perfect candidates for conquest, domination and liquidation on a whim. Be we still have to fall in love and make friends and exchange ideas. Even this post right now is easily traceable to yours truly, I have no doubt whatsoever. But am I going to stop living because there are monsters in our midst? Hmm. Nope. It's sort of a race to the finish line using the same track; we can share information and build strong ties as a community which can prepare and help prevent attack, and while we do this, the enemy learns all the clever ways it can attack by secretly watching as we form our communities. Who will win?
Not sure what the answer is, but the people I've seen who spend their days clinging to anger at the unfairness of it all tend to make themselves sick and miserable and don't generally DO anything productive with their knowledge. There are other ways, and communication is a vital part of it. And so is awareness. Knowing that Facebook makes you naked is important. What you choose to do after that is up to you.
-FL
In Summary (Score:3, Interesting)
In summary for Slashdot users your profile can either:
1) Tell that you are a Karma whore .... 1) .... 2) .... 3) .... 4) ???? .... 5) Profit! :) )
2) Tell that you are always baiting to be flamed
3) You actually have good Karma
4) Never take anything seriously if everything is modded +5 Funny
5) Are way too serious and boring if everything is +5 Interesting
6) You ask too many questions if +5 interesting
7) Show you take too much pride in being the first at anything (first post or low UID)
8) Have too much spare time if you post on Slashdot!
9) If you link to Goatse you have a very troubled mind
10) Take advantage of others if you post an article on your website for ad-revenue
11) Fail to recognize patterns for posting dupe articles
12) Are greedy if you always post
13) You are Cowboy Neal. ( I think this was obligatory
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Don't make me stalk the shit out of you
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The closest you'll get to a profile is my CV. I generally leave profiles blank, and I'm not a FaceSpace or MyBook fan.
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Re:Employers look! (Score:5, Informative)
My facebook profile is hidden from all searches, you can't find it unless I add you first.
Just go to Privacy > Search
There choose:
Search visibiliy > Friends
Uncheck all boxes and Save changes.
I suggest to everyone looking for a job to do the same.
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and that's secure, like that 17gb torrent [wired.com] that was floating around recently with all the "friends only" pictures they collected from everyone's profiles.
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That's a security flaw, sure.
But somehow I don't think many competent small businesses and HR departments going to ThePirateBay to find out what pictures you and I might be taking. In fact, I don't imagine them spending more than a couple minutes trying to find possible MySpace or Facebook profiles.
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I suggest to everyone looking for a job to do the same.
Or better yet, make a fake facebook profile that totally fluffs all the stuff an employer would be looking for -- photoshop yourself in to pictures with important people in your field, talk about your work on important projects, talk about your social connections with management at potential customers, venture capitalists, etc. The kind of stuff you might not put on a formal resume, but the kind of stuff that would make you appear as a very valuable asset.
Just make sure NOT to mention it to them at all, le
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This gets into a wild question of ethics and meta-communication.
There are varying opinions about the role of HR vs. "being aggressive" with job searches, etc.
Since employers often do look, it rewards smarter people to shield their wilder pages away from simple searches, and/or post "employer-friendly" profiles in plain sight.
Then it gets into:
"If you lied on your profile, should we trust you?"
"Why were you looking at all?"
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And a select subset of my profile is available for all to see. If a potential employer looks me up they will see a perfectly normal socially adjusted person who likes watching soccer.
I consider my public profile as an additional resume.
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You're not from around here, are you?
Re:Employers look! (Score:5, Interesting)
I can tell you as an employer, we scan all the popular "social networking" sites before looking at someone as a possible employee.
Hell, that's what I'm counting on - my own personal website has a far more diversified list of my projects (as well as source code, schematics, and other bits and pieces) than you'll ever get from a resume. Of course then again it's not on some trendy "social network" site - it's my name, as a domain, that I've owned for years. I figure, if they're going to look, why not show off? (And not in the suggestive 18-25 girl sense - though being single again, I wish our recruiters would look for that sort of thing.)
You're no longer anonymous (Score:3, Funny)
Your IP address is 192.168.0.1