
Dating with Graph Search - JacksonGariety
http://jacksongariety.com/journals/dating-with-graph-search
======
seiji
_When you really get down to it, high school is about relationships with the
opposite sex, both intimate and friendly._

Not quite true for everybody.

 _The truth is that the plethora of information Facebook knows about you is
unfathomable._

That's the crux of the matter right there — nobody normal realizes every
click, every website visit, every posted word, every posted picture, every
mobile refresh, and every contact in your auto-stolen address book betrays
you.

For most people, the betrayal doesn't matter. The local barista/actor doesn't
want to understand thousand-dimensional data analyses and what that portends
for their future. Mainly, because it doesn't matter for them. Who does it
matter for though? Future important people? Assembling massive future
corporate blackmail material? Thoughtcrime? Crime by association? Or does none
of this matter at all and it's just people bitching about bad dinners, good
vacations, and showing unlimited baby pictures?

There's nothing new to be said to us about the evil of Facebook/Google, but
normals have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.

~~~
tbirdz
>Thoughtcrime? Crime by association?

I think this point rings especially true, especially in the light of recent
events at PyCon. Social media has vast power to build or ruin reputations, and
having all your private information on facebook can give you a larger surface
area to attack.

~~~
kafkaesque
This has always interested me (well, maybe not always--I'm not that cutting
edge :p).

I used to have Facebook but deleted it, because I didn't like the whole
concept of people using your online persona against you. Yes, my profile is
still in Facebook's database but at least it is no longer immediately
searchable/accessible.

And what I'm getting at is I have some friends with anarchist tendencies. Two
of them are computer scientists and they had/have no problems voicing their
anarchist thoughts on Facebook.

The other person was in the (German) languages field and she would never talk
about it nor post anything related to it on her Facebook.

I still don't know where I stand because I travel to and from the US a lot,
and feel if they associate me with anarchist _stuff_ this may complicate
matters when trying to cross the boarder.

For example, I was going to post a photoquote (I just made that up) with
Thoreau and the statement "If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a
rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider
whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a
nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I
say, break the law."

But I decided not to. Hurrah for self-censorship, brought to you by the gov't.

------
chacham15
> These machines will know more about you than you do. These machines will
> decide what you eat, the kinds of clothes you buy, the books you read, the
> television shows you watch, and the kind of person you are.

While I very much applaud your interest in data analysis, this is very much an
overreach. Even assuming that facebook has as much information about you as
you think, there has been no service which is better at predicting what you
like than you yourself. Furthermore, I have yet to come across a music
discovery service which can predict music that I like when I specifically give
it songs that I like.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that facebook only knows as much about
you as you tell it. I dont use foursqare, checkins, status updates, instagram,
photo uploads, etc; not because of some ideology for privacy, but rather
because I simply dont find them useful. I know that I am not the only one like
that. Facebook has relatively little information about me. I also do not stay
logged in to facebook so the link tracking is also nearly useless.

~~~
apl002
I wonder if facebook archives any of this information? In the past I was very
active on facebook interacting with my friends during college. However I have
now graduated and slowly began deleting myself from facebook because I no
longer have a use for it (and I worry about jobs). If I completely delete my
profile, i wonder if they still have my information

~~~
JacksonGariety
Absolutely they archive this information. The of the monetizable web depends
upon it!

~~~
Meist
This is actually not true, and has been verified by the Irish Data Commission
([http://www.dataprotection.ie/documents/press/Facebook_Irelan...](http://www.dataprotection.ie/documents/press/Facebook_Ireland_Audit_Review_Report_21_Sept_2012.pdf)
see Page 44)

User accounts that are deleted have all associated user created content and
data hard deleted after account is deleted. Additionally, a user deletes
content (status updates, comments, etc..) that data is hard deleted.

------
MoreMoschops
"I had a list of 10 young women who went to my high school, their birthdays,
profile photos, class schedules, the television shows they watch, the people
they've dated, the parties they went to, where they eat on which days, and
even a handful of mobile and home phone numbers. Did I purposefully cause
chance meetings with people at my high school? I did. Did I go on dates with a
number of those people? I did. Do they, to this day, have any idea how we came
to meet each other? Not in the slightest."

Is that more than a little creepy? Yes, it is.

~~~
amirmc
What's creepy? That he described what he did or that it's _possible_ to do now
(quite easily, in fact). Your comment implies the former but I find the latter
more interesting.

Do you really think this the only guy or girl who's tried this?

~~~
EliRivers
It's always been possible to stalk people and gather lots of information about
them in order to increase ones chances of striking up a romantic relationship
with them. it's always been possible to do this with many people at once.

It's always been creepy.

"Do you really think this the only guy or girl who's tried this?"

How did you get that? He didn't say anything like that. He pointed out that
this is creepy. Just because people have been creepy for as long as there have
been people doesn't change that.

------
dizzystar
>> _Facebook isn't a novelty anymore, it has become something much worse. It
has become a necessity._

\-- Well, not really. I don't have an account open with them and never have.

Since I'm out of the loop entirely, what have people really gained from using
Facebook? The only thing I've heard was reconnecting with old friends (why
would I want that?) and mindless browsing. I guess the other thing is that
people prefer to use their chat service instead of using text on their phone.

I've of course seen Facebook pages and I've seen some truly amazing social
media marketing campaigns on it that are worth studying, but for the life of
me, I can't figure out what the appeal is for a person, thus I don't get the
quote about it being a necessity. I don't want people holding data about me
and I don't want people stalking me. I don't want to have a bunch of "friends"
I never met and I don't want to live a life where I "deleted 200 friends."
That's nuts and downright frightening.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Stories. So you think about all the people you've known, the interactions you
had, and some folks naturally wonder "I wonder what ever happened to ..." Its
even a cliche in movies where during the final credits little pop-ups appear
over the characters and say something funny about what they ended up doing
after the events of the movie took place. So if you happen to run into someone
from the "old days" there is often a period of "catching up."

Facebook scratches that itch in spades. Sometimes in a quite creepy way. But
it is insanely entertaining to lots and lots and lots of people.

~~~
dizzystar
I probably met 2 to 3 thousand people in my life and I honestly couldn't
remember their names. Part of the magic of life is remembering those
experiences, moving forward, and creating more experiences for you to live.
Knowing that I crossed paths with interesting people is enough for me. If I
really wanted to keep in contact with all the people I knew, I would have kept
up. A simple email would suffice in most cases.

The fact is that we all change and we all grow apart at some point. Your
statement makes me wonder how easy it is to slide into that unhealthy
territory where you live in your past, and that is my philosophical issue with
it.

So what if I missed out on a high school crush? Chances are she is married and
has a kid by now. The real chance is that I see her now and realize she is not
that pretty, not that smart, or has the same exact personality that I
remember, but now it grates into me. There are other people and experiences
hanging around the corner that are more than happy to see the future with me,
no matter how brief.

I couldn't care less what my friends in HS had for lunch at the nightclub last
night. I could take great photos and make it look like I live in paradise.

Anyway, the point I took issue with is the idea that Facebook is a necessity,
and your statement does not prove the case in point at all. Why is it a
necessity to look back and wonder? Why is it a need to connect with a large
group of strangers? Why is it a need to see what someone you haven't seen for
15 years does for a living? Fine, check because you are curious, but once you
check 5 times, you are inching closer to the line of obsession and refusal to
let go.

------
josephjrobison
This is exactly what I was wondering the other day if it was possible, you
nailed it on the head, major props. Basically nobody in high school is on
match.com or other dating sites because it's not legal and kids just don't
seem to do it. So this is a fantastic algorithmic way to optimize who you
should be talking to. A huge factor in finding a good person to date is
familiarity and their closeness to you. If they see you all the time and you
send out trustworthy, non-socially awkward signals, they are likely to trust
you more.

~~~
adambard
> If they see you all the time and you send out trustworthy, non-socially
> awkward signals, they are likely to trust you more.

What a staggeringly ironic sentiment, given the context.

~~~
josephjrobison
Haha very true, I was going to continue on with that comment and explain more.
But then I went back and actually read the end of the article and realized it
was about how creepy Facebook is and not really about finding a better date
through Facebook. So I was going to either delete the comment or just leave it
as is and see if anyone understood it, so it's funny in that way.

------
joshAg
> With another minute of manual curation I had a list of 10 young women who
> went to my high school, their birthdays, profile photos, class schedules,
> the television shows they watch, the people they've dated, the parties they
> went to, where they eat on which days, and even a handful of mobile and home
> phone numbers.

It's creepy that it's so easy to grab that much information about someone.

~~~
JacksonGariety
...and without the use of an API.

~~~
ohazi
Why does use of an API matter one way or another?

~~~
joshAg
because that makes it much easier to automate.

------
JonSkeptic
So.....how'd those dates turn out?

------
nuclear_eclipse
> _... around a couple of corners, past a drinking fountain that nobody uses
> ..._

Off topic, but now that you mention it, I don't think I've seen a single
drinking fountain anywhere on campus in the year I've been working here. An
odd observation, but the prevalence of microkitchens with tons of options
(including filtered water dispensers) kind of negates the need for fountains
everywhere.

~~~
katbyte
I've noticed that trend lately in new buildings and attributed it to
management wanting to sell more bottled water from vending machines.

------
apl002
I loved the research you did, a little apocalyptic at the end, but nonetheless
a great read.

------
hideo
Just a heads up: Your website looks strange on Chromium "24.0.1312.56 Built on
Ubuntu 12.10, running on LinuxMint 14"

<http://i.imgur.com/zXmcCwC.png>

~~~
JacksonGariety
I JUST pushed this change moments ago hoping nobody would notice. I reloaded
apache before I compiled assets. Thanks, though!

------
majani
The information they have is getting rather noisy though. People are liking
and sharing all kinds of random stuff nowadays. Wonder if they can mitigate
for this.

------
brianbreslin
someone needs to hire this kid!

~~~
JacksonGariety
I actually spoke with multiple social data companies on the phone today, calls
with people who read this post. What a great way to get hired.

------
IheartApplesDix
Your design layout and grammar and personality give me violent impulses. Just
thought you should know since that kind of data isn't available through FB's
APIs.

------
nlintz
"Did I go on dates with a number of those people?" Is that number 0?

~~~
nlintz
"Masturblogging (verb): the act of repeatedly fiddling with the look of one's
blog, often to the point of social seclusion." — Jackson Gariety

This dude faps to code

------
nlintz
Lets see it on #github

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Hashtagging Github in a comment on HN? What is the world coming to?

