Facebook is facing criticism after it emerged it
had conducted a psychology experiment on
nearly 700,000 users without their knowledge.
The test saw Facebook “manipulate” news
feeds to control which emotional expressions
the users were exposed to.


The research was done in collaboration with two
US universities to gauge if “exposure to
emotions led people to change their own
posting behaviours”.
Facebook said there was “no unnecessary
collection of people’s data”.
“None of the data used was associated with a
specific person’s Facebook account,” the social
networking giant added.
Cornell University and the University of
California at San Francisco were involved in the
study.
Ability to manipulate?


But some have criticised the way the research
was conducted and raised concerns over the
impact such studies could have.
“Let’s call the Facebook experiment what it is: a
symptom of a much wider failure to think about
ethics, power and consent on platforms,” Kate
Crawford posted on Twitter.
Lauren Weinstein tweeted: “Facebook secretly
experiments on users to try make them sad.
What could go wrong?”
Meanwhile, Labour MP Jim Sheridan, a member
of the Commons media select committee has
called for an investigation into the matter.
“This is extraordinarily powerful stuff and if
there is not already legislation on this, then
there should be to protect people,” he
was quoted as saying by The Guardian
newspaper.


“They are manipulating material from people’s
personal lives and I am worried about the ability
of Facebook and others to manipulate people’s
thoughts in politics or other areas.
“If people are being thought-controlled in this
kind of way there needs to be protection and
they at least need to know about it.”
However, Katherine Sledge Moore, a psychology
professor at Elmhurst College, Illinois, said:
“Based on what Facebook does with their
newsfeed all of the time and based on what
we’ve agreed to by joining Facebook, this study
really isn’t that out of the ordinary.”
“The results are not even that alarming or
exciting.”
‘Very sorry’

The research was conducted on 689,000
Facebook users over a period of one week in
2012.
According to the report on the study: “The
experiment manipulated the extent to which
people were exposed to emotional expressions
in their News Feed”.


The study found that users who had fewer
negative stories in their news feed were less
likely to write a negative post, and vice versa.
Adam Kramer of Facebook, who co-authored the
report on the research, said: “We felt that it was
important to investigate the common worry
that seeing friends post positive content leads
to people feeling negative or left out”.
“At the same time, we were concerned that
exposure to friends’ negativity might lead
people to avoid visiting Facebook.”


However, he admitted that the firm did not
“clearly state our motivations in the paper”.
“I can understand why some people have
concerns about it, and my co-authors and I are
very sorry for the way the paper described the
research and any anxiety it caused.”


Source: BBC

What's the point of experimenting in secret and then making the results public. Facebook should brace themselves for another law suit