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Seth Stephens-Davidowitz recently published a book called “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are.” Before writing his book, Seth used Google searches to measure topics such as racism, self-induced abortion, depression and sexual preference, and his findings are quite interesting.
You don’t really know them
People lie a lot — either to their spouses, friends, family or even themselves, so it can be tricky to figure out who is being honest to you. Stephens was able to analyze the traces of information that billions of people have left behind on Google and social media to figure out the truth about people, and it suggests that many surveys about the general population are not credible.
How could this impact the future?
Social media is incredibly important for businesses and companies, ashey can use social media to better understand their customers. Stephens’ analysis could lead more businesses to turn to Google search data to get a better grasp on the people they are targeting.
Similarly, this data could really change politics. Surveys always suggest that people want to know the more important information such as policy positions, Social Security, Medicare and taxes. But in reality, people are more superficial and tend to focus more on the basic information of people in politics.
Takeaway
Big data and the internet have the potential to change many things in our future, from the way people run their businesses to politics. It will be interesting to see how the two will change the way people operate on the internet, and if people will become transparent or more secretive.
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