Considering
the increasingly social online world we are living in, there are
moments when we update statuses or tweets or pictures which may seem fun
at the time, but in retrospect can be embarrassing. Some posts can even
cost you your jobs. Like it happened with the developer of Clear, an
app that helps you delete those cringe-inducing statuses from your
social networks.
Clear
basically connects with your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts
and analyses your history so far. It will flag certain posts which the
app thinks has inappropriate content. To separate out these posts from
the harmless ones, Clear uses a combination of algorithms and IBM
supercomputer Watson to filter results.
App
developer of Clear, Ethan Czahor, made this app after he lost a job
because of his tweets. Czahor who joined as the Chief Technology Officer
(CTO) for American politician Jeb Bush’s campaign, had to resign from
his post after a series of tweets from last couple of years were
unearthed. In his defence, Czahor says that he was part of an improv
comedy group back in the day and the tweets were meant to be joke
material, which was taken out of context.
Czahor
developed Clear, which identifies certain keywords and also zeros in on
posts that mentions groups of people, such as women, LGBT community,
nationalities and so on.
Sentiment
analysis is done by IBM’s Watson which highlights posts with negative
language. You then get a score at the end depending on how many posts
have been flagged. You can then proceed to delete those posts.
According
to Czahor quoted in Mashable, the app is still a work in progress and
the accuracy will increase over time. In the near future Clear will also
support identification of offensive or embarrassing photos.
The
app is currently in Beta and is available on the iOS platform. You will
be put on a waiting list before the app will be available to be
downloaded.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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