Why You Should Like Curly Fries

by BradyHeyen

In a riveting lecture from the Ted X MidAtlantic stage, Jennifer Golbeck, computer scientist at the University of Maryland, describes what she coined as “the curly fry conundrum.” This talk is an exploration of the effects of “liking” something on Facebook. Surprisingly, a Facebook “like” says a lot more than you might think.

I think there is a great majority of America who sees Facebook advertisements as pure magic. “How in the world did they know I wanted dog diapers???” I’m sure we’ve all heard an exclamative concern similar to this one at some point in our lives. But for many of us, we understand the correlation of Facebook advertisements to our activity. If we “like” a fast food restaurant on Facebook, we are likely to see advertisements for other fast food restaurants on our feed in a matter of days. We know and expect this to be true, and it doesn’t really phase us.

But Golbeck has taken the correlations of our online activity to a new level. Computer scientists have discovered that they can estimate demographic information people who “like” a certain page to a disturbing accuracy. Their basis for this discovery is the idea of homophily. Homophily is simply the concept that you are friends with people that are similar to you. Smart people typically have smart friends. Good looking people typically have good looking friends. You get the idea. Well researchers have been able to make assumptions on other “likers” of a page, based on just a few of the “likers.” For example, it was found that people that “like” the Facebook page for curly fries are very likely to be smart people. Watch the whole talk below for a more in depth explanation:

So what are we to do about this?

Well, Golbeck lays out a few action paths for us, but in the end, I think we should just be more aware of our online activity. We tend to see our online activity as completely personal, or existing solely within our friend group. This could not be further from the truth. When you post publicly, everyone has access to that information. This is simply something we should be aware of in order to, in the words of Golbeck, “improve the way people interact online.”

Be present in online activity, but be aware.