Today Facebook has released data relating to "Likes" by it's users. The data also contains things like age, sex, race and sexuality. In creating an algorithm to sift through this data, Facebook has basically been able to profile people. This act of profiling allows Facebook to now know a users tendencies and most private details.
Examples:
- You "Like" comments from your white friends but don't "Like" comments from your black friends. Facebook could now consider you somewhat racist.
- You "Like" comments from your homosexual friends but you don't "Like" comments from your heterosexual friends. Facebook won't consider you "homophobic".
These examples are part of an extreme, but they prove a point. That Facebook can use your most basic actions, "Liking" to conclude things about you. They used over 8,000 who freely shared their actions, making me wonder what exactly they're concluding about the over 1 billion users currently registered.
This article also states that this cannot be done with users who have their Privacy settings set to where the public cannot view their "Likes".
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