This article explains how people express their psycopathic traits through their tweets. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/23/twitter-psychopaths Well I am a psycopath.
Datamining will become a tool in most trades if people do not choose sites that offer more secure options. Imagine if a company could use something like this and use the data found to decide whether or not to hire you? Or if this kind of thing were done to check and see if you were allowed to own a firearm? This is the kind of thing I can see some official trying to further their career with. Like that guy who tried to sell out Anonymous using Facebook.
Many companies and and professionals nowadays ask you if you have a facebook account so that they can check it and see a more "real" you. I've heard many stories where someone wasn't hired because of their posts in facebook or they got fired, for the same reason. People choose to share their information with the world, they should know that this might have cosequences in the future. For instance, if I post a naked picture of me here or on Facebook and later seek for a job, then this could be the reason why I won't be hired. Or perhaps someone can blackmail me, or thousand other cases that could harm me or my image. If people were more thoughtful, then this method in the article, and other ones, would be rather useful in several situations, and more accurate as well.
But my issue is that the more secure modes of communication are dying out because people don't care. It is very frustrating trying to get people to switch over.
People are idiots, and you really need to work hard to change that. But it's their right to do whatever they want, so you can only do your part well and hope the rest will happen.
I have a feeling this could have major flaws. It should be used to support evidence of psychopathy rather than use it as the main detection system, or even a minor detection system.
I agree to an extent. People should always be careful of what they share with the world, but the speech patterns used in this method aren't comparable to drunken pictures on Facebook. People usually talk and write on auto-pilot, having a sort of signature language. A line has been crossed when you have to be so "thoughtful" that you should limit your usage of the past tense and/or conjunction words in order for people to not get the wrong idea. I've had that same feeling. I'm glad they weren't too keen on labeling people as "certified psychopaths", but I would at least investigate the causal link between psychopathy and speech pattern before basing any significant decisions on it.
