More than six million Americans have come out on Facebook

https://research.facebook.com/blog/403359139870267/america-s-coming-out-on-facebook/?ref

by techbullets • 11 years ago

29 21 11 years ago

research.facebook.com

boothead• 11 years ago

How many of those forgot to lock their computer?

ihsw• 11 years ago

A statistically insignificant amount.

mrits• 11 years ago

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.

CameronBanga• 11 years ago

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.

hellbanner2• 11 years ago

Facebook isn't always supportive of life circumstances:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/564493676910603

herbig• 11 years ago

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.

amyjess3• 11 years ago

That form also includes a couple of very relevant fields whose presence should explain why this form is necessary:

Link to applicable law or legal authority regarding inmate social media access
If you're unable to provide this kind of legal context, please let us know if there are specific reasons why granting Facebook access to this particular inmate poses a serious safety risk.

It's not for shutting down the accounts of every inmate, just ones where it's illegal for them to access social media or if there's some kind of security risk associated with it.

notahacker2• 11 years ago

From personal experience, the "interested in" setting results in messages from old friends you'd never have bothered to actually come out to as well as different dating app ads in the sidebar...

tantalor• 11 years ago

As a general rule, I replace "on Facebook" with an empty string, and it usually improves the clarity of the original sentence.

auganov• 11 years ago

I don't see a contradiction here. Facebook's push to make people share more information about themselves [potentially] helps both ad revenue and in this case LGBT visibility. It's not a huge stretch to say Facebook helped a lot. Personally I think they have all the rights in this world to brag about it. In fact what's so great about technology/startups is you can generate great value for the world and make money for yourself.

And actually no you cannot target ads by non-binary genders it seems.

amyjess3• 11 years ago

Yep. As someone who had a very public coming-out a little over a year and a half ago, I can say that I wouldn't have been able to do it without Facebook.

All I had to do was post one little essay and change my gender to "Female" (and my name a week later), and suddenly I'm out to almost 200 people. It was so much easier than coming out to people one-on-one or in small groups, which I only did for a small handful of people.

A whole ton of people I don't really see much anymore like ex-coworkers and high school friends found out that way, and I probably wouldn't have been able to come out to them at all if not for Facebook.

pskocik• 11 years ago

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

amyjess3• 11 years ago

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

notahacker2• 11 years ago

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

ipsin• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

Facebook isn't my friend

Why do you still use Facebook?

jinst8gmi• 11 years ago

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

ionised• 11 years ago

Are you suggesting Facebook is your friend?

tajen• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

More than six million Americans have come out on Facebook

Related Stories