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Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has used data from the internet, particularly Google searches, to get new insights into the human psyche.  A book summarizing his research, Everybody Lies, was published in May 2017[…]
Is your Facebook wall more of a façade? Data shows that people are brutally honest with Google, but that Facebook is a pack of shameless lies.
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To know who someone really is, don’t look at their Facebook wall—look at their Google Search data. This is off-limits information to most people (definitely for the best), but data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has analyzed what’s behind that curtain. His findings echo what you may intuitively feel: skepticism over how incredible everyone’s life looks on Facebook, compared to your own. He cautions people not to compare yourself to that rosy standard for a pretty simple reason: it’s a bundle of lies and exaggerations. Facebook presents who we want to be, but Google Search knows who we really are. Davidowitz calls it a “revolutionary truth serum”, one that reveals that on Facebook husbands are described as “amazing” and “so cute”, but in the confessional booth of Google Search, they are “gay” “jerks”. Ouch. What it boils down to is that bragging is lying, but searching for knowledge is truthful. That, and that Facebook and Google might be the best social experiments ever designed. Stephens-Davidowitz is the author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are.



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Has Google become our modern confessional? Former Google data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz discusses how Google knows you better than your friends and family–maybe even yourself. He is the author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are.