Facebook conducted a huge social experiment on its users

[Knut]

http://www.slate.com/articles/health...anipulate.html

The researchers, who are affiliated with Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California–San Francisco, tested whether reducing the number of positive messages people saw made those people less likely to post positive content themselves. The same went for negative messages: Would scrubbing posts with sad or angry words from someone’s Facebook feed make that person write fewer gloomy updates?

Interesting. But is it ethical?

[Street Pharmacist]

Testing people by manipulating their emotions without consent is unethical. I have no problem with them changing content as that's what they do all the time.

[metallicat]

I wish they would do a social experiment to see how happy I would be if I saw everything all my friends posted. If I don't want to see something, Facebook, I'd defined them.

[GGG]

If facebook just did without using publicly funded scientests then it is just facebook tweaking its algorithims. By using public resources and publishing the info I think you cross a line.

Facebook has always been a social experiment and facebook is always being optimized to better mine data and present ads.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by GGG

If facebook just did without using publicly funded scientests then it is just facebook tweaking its algorithims. By using public resources and publishing the info I think you cross a line.

Facebook has always been a social experiment and facebook is always being optimized to better mine data and present ads.

Stanley Milgram says Hi and wants you to come see him next week.

[jar_e]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Testing people by manipulating their emotions without consent is unethical. I have no problem with them changing content as that's what they do all the time.

I bet a dollar that something along these lines are buried in the TOU when you sign up for Facebook.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by jar_e

I bet a dollar that something along these lines are buried in the TOU when you sign up for Facebook.

Doesn't make it ethical.

[Regular_John]

Hold up, Facebook did something unethical with their user's data? Surely you jest. That's just so unlike them.

[Huntingwhale]

What a dumb thing to study.

[Northendzone]

Meh, it's facebook, if you don't like it, then don't sign up......I wonder if there is a way to tell if any of the crap I posted was manipulated.....

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

What a dumb thing to study.

Would you have said that had jaydorn not posted a negative comment just before you posted? I wonder.

[Huntingwhale]

Yes.