The rainbow photo thing on Facebook is a social investigation.

Have you had your photo changed and put the gay flag filter on it?

If you've ever filled out a survey, you may have been surprised to see that some of the questions have only two answer choices. Admittedly, the ability to understand people's behavior from such simple questions that are not very sensitive to nuance can be questioned, but in a global sense such surveys are statistically useful.. 

Although it may seem strange, the fact that many people find themselves in the situation of having to choose one or the other answer helps to establish profiles, to study which variables influence this decision and to know roughly why one or the other answer is chosen.

The rainbow pictures on Facebook could be social research

Recently we have witnessed another phenomenon that could be interpreted as a type of social research: the option to apply a rainbow filter on the profile picture used on Facebook. applying a rainbow filter on the profile picture used on Facebook..

This initiative, which has been related to the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of gay marriage (by the way, a day before something similar happened in Mexico without such a fuss) has materialized in an option of automatic modification of the profile picture that most of the regular users of the social network have had to accept or reject. Does this situation sound familiar? Yes, it is practically the same context in which the questions of an online questionnaire or survey are presented.

Why would Facebook want to study this kind of thing?

Well, actually the question should be: why should I not want to study it? Facebook is an endless source of information for research based on data mining, since the social network is made up of millions of people who, minute by minute, upload texts, photographs and statuses that are easily analyzed by a computer system. The potential is incredible and practically unfathomable.

See, for example, the usefulness that Mark Zuckerberg's invention can have in the establishment of personality models, as we saw in this article.

However, the possibility of coloring the profile picture has a special interest. Using the rainbow will rarely be the result of boredom, decisions taken lightly or the simple desire to appear open-minded. Even in the 21st century, supporting the equality of all people regardless of their sexual preferences is revolutionary, almost controversial, and can have adverse effects on the person who decides to make visible his or her defense of these values.

Discussions, defamatory comments behind one's back, family problems... standing up for equality is not always free. Therefore, the decision to apply or not the rainbow filter will probably be approached from a more conscientious analysis than the decision to wear a ribbon in favor of the victims of terrorism or an avatar related to the type of music one is a fan of. In addition, the LGTB flag flag is internationally known, so everyone who uses it as a filter will attribute a similar meaning to it. The same will happen to everyone who sees it.

Possible points of interest

In the end, the data extracted from a simple click to modify the profile picture can be used to, among other things, create statistical models to see:

• To what extent do people who stand up for same-sex marriage are influenced by the number of Facebook friends who do the same.

• To what extent the fact of having placed the filter has an impact on the emergence of conflicts or the deterioration of ties. (indirectly measured by the number of interactions with others via Facebook and by the frequency with which people click on the "unfriend" option in the weeks following the application of the filter).

• The typology of the people who apply the filterThe typology of the people who apply the filter, those who do not apply it, and study their interactions via Facebook.

• The relationship between all these variables and the political preferences registered on Facebook, the attachment to certain brands, etc.

... and many other possibilities, as many as the response and interaction options offered by the social network.

It is not a far-fetched possibility, taking into account that everything we do ceases to be private the moment it enters Facebook and that companies are perfectly capable of paying to obtain all kinds of information and that, in addition, this also applies to studies in social psychology and sociology studies done on demand. In fact, there is already a very similar precedent.