
More than six million Americans have come out on Facebook - techbullets
https://research.facebook.com/blog/403359139870267/america-s-coming-out-on-facebook/?ref
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CameronBanga
Anyone else think the post title is disingenuous? Seems written to infer that
Facebook was the tool that lead six million Americans to feel comfortable
about their sexuality and opening come out.

But they define coming out as simply setting your sexual preference as being
the same sex as your own. Facebook isn't helpIng or causing this, people are
just expressing it on a social network.

Just bothersome personally, because it sounds self-righteous and as if
Facebook is help progressing equality. In reality, allowing users to express
they are gay (and any other tools/changes that made this easier, as discussed
in the blog post) are simply measures Facebook implemented to help mine more
extremely personal information about individuals in order to better peddle
Totino's Party Pizza™.

Personally, just tired of brands that attempt to push such an agenda. You want
to know if I'm gay so you can target me with more appropriate ads. You don't
care less about how such a personal decision changes my life.

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hellbanner
Facebook isn't always supportive of life circumstances:

[https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/564493676910603](https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/564493676910603)

~~~
herbig
This is Facebook's inmate account report page.

For me, it was hidden if you're logged into Facebook, with a message that
says:

"This form is for people who can't log into their accounts, but it looks like
you're logged in."

This makes it essentially unsharable.

Facebook is garbage, I'm ashamed I'm actually still on there.

~~~
hellbanner
Well, it's not too late to sign off :)

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tajen
I came out on Facebook, after telling my 20 most important friends in person.
I didn't set my preference to "gay", I just wrote it in a picture, in the hope
that Facebook itself would have a harder time registering this information.
Therefore I don't think I qualify for their stats. From my experience the
guesstimate of 10% people being gay is close to the truth, so Facebook is
missing 30m gays in the US...

Concerning privacy, on the other hand, Google Reader, The Old Reader and
Tumblr have extremely precise details about my tastes. I wonder what my
profile at the NSA looks like: My facebok is registered under a false name
against an email which is now defunct and I browse it in a separate Chrome
profile, but they could easily recoup me if they notice I use the same camera
to post on facebook and other websites.

Or Facebook could notice I browse gay friends with more interest ;)

~~~
jgroszko
There was a bunch of research when Facebook started becoming big around what
could be determined just from who your friends are. Basically, Facebook can
already figure it out based on who your friends are, even if you didn't check
it off in their interface.

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boothead
How many of those forgot to lock their computer?

~~~
mrits
Yeah, it turned out 1 million of them was a dude that used the college
computer lab without logging out.

I know hacker news is for serious conversation but the stats behind this link
are so dumb I don't think they deserve it.

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pskocik
If every "I'm gay" status registers, they're probably getting a lot of false
positives. :D

~~~
amyjess
They're using changes in the "Interested in" or "gender" fields on your
profile.

~~~
notahacker
Which, in fairness are also a magnet for false positives...

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ipsin
I "came out" on Facebook because I changed my gender to "gender
nonconforming"... but the only reason I did that is because my friends already
know me, and Facebook isn't my friend.

~~~
vinceyuan
> _Facebook isn 't my friend_

Why do you still use Facebook?

~~~
jinst8gmi
So he can point at his FB friends list and prove that Facebook isn't in it.

