They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction.
Gay people have gay friends? Brilliant! Or did they mean the gender and sex of a persons friends. There's a big fat whopping difference here. One is much more impressive than the other.
Gender and sex are the same 99+% of the time. The rest of the time, it's impossible to tell from Facebook alone. It's not like Facebook has an "I'm a transsexual" checkbox on your profile.
Identifying a closeted gay person from the proportion of openly gay friends they have is indeed an obvious approach. The surprise is how well it works.
Gay people have gay friends? Brilliant! Or did they mean the gender and sex of a persons friends. There's a big fat whopping difference here. One is much more impressive than the other.