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Algorithm Deduces Drunk Tweets From Geolocation, Behavioral Data (thestack.com) 51

Posted by timothy from the slurred-lines dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have devised an algorithm for identifying people who post on Twitter while drunk at home, using both geolocation tags and behavioral data. The researchers analysed alcohol-related tweets from New York City and Rochester, and found that the tweeting drinkers in Monroe were likelier to be out of their houses than New Yorkers. The scientists concluded that the model could reveal important real-time information for public health research — creating a tool for improving a community's health, and using social media as a resource to spread positive health behavior.
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Algorithm Deduces Drunk Tweets From Geolocation, Behavioral Data More

Algorithm Deduces Drunk Tweets From Geolocation, Behavioral Data

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  • Frist Psot? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Frist psot? Two drumk 2 tel;.

  • Big Brother is watching your liquor cabinet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday March 17, 2016 @07:58AM (#51714267) Journal

    using social media as a resource to spread positive health behavior.

    In other words, a resource for insurers to screw you for drinking "at home and/or at inappropriate hours", and for employers to give you a bollocking over the same.

    • This was not actually checking to see if a person was drunk, it was speculation that a person was. Similarly, the Government won't really check to see if you are drunk. They will check to see if you are a threat in any way, and then _claim_ that you are drunk.

      When "drunk" has no definition provided, and the Government claims that anything from .5 and higher is drunk (1 drink), it should be obvious that this really is not about anyone's health.

      • As a big of old Shaw brothers Kung Fu films, I immediately thought: "Ha! Drunken Tweeter Style!" (Zui Quan). For those who have not heard of Kung Fu "Drunken Boxer Style", Wikipedia describes it like this:

        The technical features of zui quan are based on imitating a drunkard. The main body method is called sloshing, which refers to "Hollow Body, Wine Belly" concept, as though the body is hollow and the lower abdomen (; dantian) is filled with wine (instead of Qi), which travels through the body adding power to the movements. The postures are driven by weight and momentum of the whole body, staggering around, creating sudden power from awkward positions, and fluidity in the movements and transitions from one pose to another. Drunken body style seems peculiar and off-balance, but it is actually in balance.

        Appearing to be drunk confuses the opponent. It's like an Internet troll, when someone pretends to be right or left wing, a racist or a racist of color to bait and hook people to come out. There's probably something that you can achieve by appearing to be tweeting while drunk. I haven't thought about

  • How are they identifying the drunks? Are they targeting people who tweet their ex at 4am?

  • Like i need another reason not to use Twitter. Sheesh

  • this does not sound very scientific.

    in the 1st place are these tweets from people who were really drunk? seems there was no real verification.
    without verification of data used, how can one judge the accuracy of the "algorithm"?

    even if there was verification, algorithm would only predict a probability, (eg. "algorithm indicate there is 80% probability that this tweeter is drunk") rather than a certainty.

    given all that, it is rather premature to expect this "model could reveal important real-time information for public health research".
    let alone "improving a community's health, and using social media as a resource to spread positive health behavior."

    more real science, more honesty about limits of what can be known, and less exaggeration of claims, would be better.

    btw who decides what is "positive health behavior" and the "community's" need to "spread" them? sounds rather orwellian to me.

  • OK, I'll Ask the Hard Question (Score:3)

    by LifesABeach ( 234436 ) on Thursday March 17, 2016 @08:25AM (#51714437) Homepage
    Is Linux being used here?

  • Another privacy intrusion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday March 17, 2016 @08:29AM (#51714457)

    Buy an intelligent thermostat they said, it'll save money and make you more comfortable they said.
    Now they want to track when I'm anywhere "to help determine if I'm away."

    Now they want to analyze my tweets and use my location data to see where I am?!?!?

    Get the fuck out of my life. I do not want to be a statistic, I do not want to be a data point. Now get off my lawn.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Don't use Twitter. Problem solved!

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Buy an intelligent thermostat they said, it'll save money and make you more comfortable they said. Now they want to track when I'm anywhere "to help determine if I'm away."

      Well, the purpose of using your phone location is to save you money, and you certainly don't have to opt in. The Nest thermostat does try to use its motion sensor and data from Nest cameras and fire alarms (if you have them), but "no one has been seen to be moving in the house in the last hour" is a much weaker indication of an empty house than "all occupants have mobile phones which have reported being more than 20 miles away from the house in the last five minutes."

      For my house scaling back energy usage

      • Nope, On Android I can't at least yet natively disable location services, Nest's new app requires it. It was a nice to have but it's now removed. Actually I'm probably now going to rip the fucking things off the wall and resell them on Craigslist. They're not saving me much of anything.

        Twitter at least can have it's location services disabled and I'm sorry If I sound a bit harsh but I want more coarse grained control from my mobile operating systems. It shouldn't be app by app If I don't want you trackin

        • Nope, On Android I can't at least yet natively disable location services, Nest's new app requires it.

          Nonsense.

          Open Nest app. Tap the "gear" icon in the upper right corner. Tap "Home/Away Assist". Scroll down and tap "What decides if you're home". Under "Use phone location" you'll see a list of devices that are set up to provide location. Tap yours. Tap the button to turn it off.

          Alternatively, on Android M or N, go to Settings, then Apps. Scroll down to the Nest app and tap it. Tap "Permissions". Tap the button on "location" to deny the Nest app permission to your location.

          This assumes that you've al

          • I don't give a fuck about what nest settings are, that's not my point. You can't install it now without accepting at the OS level that it accesses your location. So in that case I removed the app. I no long trust Nest. It's a data land grab. I want control from Android not the fucking app. As I said I'm ripping their shit out of my house. It hasn't saved me much if anything. I don't want tech in my home that tracks anything I do under a ToS regardless of how nifty it is. Fuck Nest.

            • You apparently didn't read past the first sentence of my post.

              • No actually I did. What you don't grasp is I don't trust vendors who do land grabs for data. You can trust Nest, I won't any longer. And the features that
                I like about Nest are actually available through my browser, which isn't chrome and that's what I'll use until
                I rip this shit out of my life. That means I can go through my browser and click away... or adjust my temps away from home and I'm not getting my
                location tracked.. That's how the app worked before and that's why I previously agreed to install

                • Why would you trust Android and not Nest?

                  • Nest = Google = Android so you're asking does the left side of your brain trust the right? I don't trust any company and you should get off of Nest's nutsack.

                    For Android, there's more eyes on it, but still eyes wide open. I'm waiting for the changes coming with M and N, it's a long time in coming.
                    As for Nest, I can't see the source code for the Nest App and as for the product, it's overpriced shit and I bought 3 of them when I upgraded my HVAC systems. What that means is roughly $750 for snooping shit t

                    • Nest = Google = Android so you're asking does the left side of your brain trust the right?

                      Pretty much. And Google is under pretty strict scrutiny from a privacy perspective, including regular FTC audits as a result of the Buzz consent decree. Google would have to be really, really stupid to collect data that users have told it not to collect. The FTC could well catch them at it, and beyond whatever the government did to them for violating the consent decree, it would become public knowledge, which would be an even larger hit.

                      (Disclosure: If you didn't know, I'm a Google engineer. I work on And

  • It's amazing (and scary) the uses people are finding for U of R's research in AI. It is a little creepy being able to make fairly accurate guess as to one state of sobriety (or lack thereoff). Then again, people who are tweating at odd hours are already more likely to fit the profile of being in a drunken state (. What is truly scary is combined with date storage, the ability to profile people. Imagine HR purchasing access to a database of info like this to prescreen applicants. Insurance companies will hav

  • Deduction creates a conclusion that is necessarily true through logic, but in this case machine learning comes to a conclusion that is only probably true.

    It's elementary, my dear Watson.Elementary, my dear Watson

  • Seems like a great service.

  • When the hashtag #ThingsThatDontGoWellTogether was trending, Dave Chappelle tweeted, "Twitter and alcohol."

    Then he left twitter not long after that.

    Smart man, that Chappelle.

  • I want to write an algorithm that uses data from wearable fitness bands with heart rate monitors to identify people who masturbate at home. Maybe the University of Rochester will fund my research.

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