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Article Review Template
Bibliographic Reference
Wells, Georgia. "Facebook ‘Likes’ Mean a Computer Knows You Better
Than Your Mother." Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 11 Sept.
2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/09/11/facebook-
likes-mean-your-computer-knows-you-better-than-your-mother.
Objectives
This article is a brief record of a Wall Street Journal interview about why
it matters that computer models are better than humans at judging
personalities.
The article claims that “likes” on Facebook are able to quickly and
effectively predict personalities.
The interview ends with the question of whether or not you should be
concerned about your own digital footprint for information security
purposes.
Summary
The article Facebook ‘Likes’ Mean a Computer Knows You Better Than
Your Mother, written by Georgia Wells addresses the information security
issues of social media sites such as Facebook. She starts off the article by
introducing background facts about leaving a digital footprint from
something as simple as ‘likes’ on Facebook. She provides a convincing case
that implies that these ‘likes’ give insight to information such as a person’s
intimate traits, political parties, careers, and school recommendations.
According to studies, as little as 10 Facebook ‘likes’ are necessary to get an
accurate personality reading.
In Wells second half of the article, she addresses The Wall Street
Journal’s perspective on this issue. Wells asked them four questions to get
important information out of Wall Street. She asks them how they know that
their computer models are more accurate than humans at judging
personalities. The Wall Street Journal provides factual data to support their
data. The next issue addressed is why they chose Facebook to focus their
study on. They claim that Facebook is the easiest social media site to study
digital footprints. Other companies and government institutions are limited
by the internal review boards of academic institutions. The second to last
question addressed in this article is why it matters that computers can
predict personalities. The Wall Street Journal claims that the information that
used to be reserved to very powerful institutions and government-run
intelligence services is now accessible by anyone on the internet. The last
question they asked was if they changed their online behavior after this
study.
Results
After reviewing the information in this article, I have learned that
regardless of whether web searches are in incognito mode, is stored by
Internet service providers, by web browsers, by government, and by a
number of marketing companies.
Positive impacts allow companies to access this information in order to
better market to their consumers and employees.
In order to protect personal identity, ensure that identifiable
information such as name, phone number, address, credit card
numbers, and smartphone locations are used only when necessary
with user discretion.
Critique
I believe that the author of this article did a great job of writing this
article. They were able to accurately capture the opinions of the Wall Street
Journal in this interview. Wells was able to include both informational
statistics and interview information. The author used multiple social media
sites in order to cover the wide field of media sites.
Questions
1. Can Facebook offer a security system that will protect important
information?
2. What are the most effective ways to monitor your own digital
footprint?
3. Are there any positive perspectives of this information being online
for anyone to see?
