We “like” things on facebook, so that we can define ourselves outward and because we want to be informed about new things around this content. #DiscrepancyOfTheSelf With liking or pressing “interested” we control which information achieves us. Through an algorithm based on one’s facebook-likes it is possible to construct a detailed personal profile. With a few 1000 likes the profile can describe a person even better than the own marriage partner.

Illuminus created an algorithm like this. With the slogan “learn what we already know about you” they motivate you to log in with your facebook details. Through an algorithm they create a personal profile of yourself based on your likes. The interests with the biggest proportion are used to classify a person continually in new categories. And based on these categories certain traits of characters are derived. Psychologists say that everyone’s character can be determined through the five-factor-model. This model assumes that our character is built through different specifications and development stages of the big five personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. And the likes are determining the manifestations of the 5 character traits.
My personal analysis for example says that I have a high manifestation in openness which indicates that I am creative, inventive and daring. Based on this character assessment it is also possible to make a statement about how high my financial and my health risk are.

And these are methods which could be used by health insurances as well as by banks when it is about whether to give a credit or not. For health insurances it is not allowed to use this as a method to calculate ones health risk. But there was a case in Quebec where the insurance stopped paying benefits to a strong depressive woman, because she was laughing on a picture that she posted on facebook.
Lenddo decides about creditworthiness based just on personal data out of different social media accounts of a person. They say this method does not refuse a credit for someone but it is a chance for everyone. People, who would also get a credit trough common way, would also be rated as creditworthy by Lenddo. The important difference is that people who normally wouldn’t be assessed as creditworthy have the chance to get one via their social media accounts. It is the chance for people with fewer possibilities to build up something own and to change their situation.

Through the algorithm it is possible to find out very specific and private information about a person. It is possible to say if the person is overweight, promiscuous or if the person goes to the polls. The different information can be used for as well as against a person.
This method can be a chance to jump ahead the stereotypes, humans tend to think in. In a way we are racists by nature. We naturally categorize a person to asses it. But we tend to do this superficial. This is why the impression of a person doesn’t always match with the character. We are not able to understand the whole complexity, so we need so simplify. And to simplify we classify. But this classification we do is not as much exact as the one the algorithm does. With enough information, it can build up a personal profile much more precise than we are able to.#perception

Also there are more and more technical devices coming onto the market which are even expanding the data collection of a person. The tracking of aspects of a person’s behaviour and recording it as numerical data is named the Quantified Self. Through the quantification of the behaviour it is possible to improve it. One example is improving fitness by tracking and increasing the kilometres you are running in a certain time. Most of the time the term Quantified Self is connected to wearable technical devices. This voluntary self-tracking is a growing trend and it has developed a whole movement out of it. For example there are several conferences around the world about this topic. In this conferences also the ethnic aspect and privacy is discussed a lot. There is probably common agreement, that the tracked data about ones behaviour should be highly protected. #lifestyle