[commanda]

The article title is inaccurate - "Matt" did know he was gay, he just wasn't out yet. Facebook's ad platform didn't figure it out before he did. Just as in the Target story, the young woman knew she was pregnant, she just hadn't told her father.

The fear mongering is a little high in this article. However, we should stop and think: why is it so scary for others to potentially know that we're gay? Or pregnant? Neither of these is a shameful state.

[a_c_s]

Nothing wrong with being gay/lgbt. But in many states in the US you can legally be fired or denied housing on the basis of being lgbt.

[camus]

really ? i thought USA was the land of the free ...

[jrockway]

The law hasn't caught up to today's social standards quite yet. Just like you can fire someone because you don't like how they dress, you can fire someone for being gay, as choice in clothes and sexual orientation aren't "protected classes":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

[PommeDeTerre]

It may not be pleasant, but it just isn't possible to have any sort of real freedom without also having the freedom to discriminate.

The moment one person is prohibited from discriminating against another, freedom is lost.

[smsm42]

Setting aside the issue of denying to enter contract with somebody because he's gay (to remove any doubt, I think it is stupid), how the absence of laws that prohibit this behavior on the state level make US not "land of the free"? What the word "freedom" means for you?

[thwest]

Here that means freedom for the business owner to fire you.

[jnorthrop]

The nature of privacy is the desire to control what others know about you and how they learn about it. Big Data is making that more difficult for individuals to control and it is making people uneasy.