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In 2012, Facebook Altered Content To Tweak Readers' Emotions
The Atlantic reports that two years ago, Facebook briefly conducted an experiment on a subset of its users, altering the mix of content shown to them to emphasize content sorted by tone, negative or positive, and observe the results. From the Atlantic article: For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.
This tinkering was just revealed as part of a new study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Many previous studies have used Facebook data to examine “emotional contagion,” as this one did. This study is different because, while other studies have observed Facebook user data, this one set out to manipulate it.
At least they showed their work.
There are laws governing obtaining informed consent from humans before performing psychological experiments on them. I doubt that a EULA can override them. This should be interesting...
This sort of thing is exactly why I have never signed up for an account. The lack of a moral compass at this company is profound.
This is quite interesting research that should never have been done. I am rather surprised that the National Academy published the results of a study which violated multiple ethical guidelines put in place to protect human subjects. Did Facebook track the number of suicides in the 700,000 sample? Was the rate of those given a sadder than average stream have a higher or lower rate? Do the Facebook researchers address the ethical questions posed by performing such an experiment at all?
I see it in my self, on the rare occasions that I actually post, which is roughly 5-10 times a year and I see it with others whenever I go online to browse a little in the posts of the people I'm connected with ... called "Friends" (Fingerquotes!) on FB:
Facebook and other "social networks" encourage posing. No two ways about it.
If you get all worked up and batter your self esteem just because somebody posted himself in cool poses or on some event that you "missed out" on ... I get this a lot, since I'm only on FB for my tango dancing connections, a pastime where posing sometimes actually is part of the game. Actually knowing the person behind a neat facade on FB does put things into perspective.
Bottom line:
People shouldn't get more attached to these things than it is good for them. If this neat little stund by FB shows them that, then all the better.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What exactly is considered a "psychological experiment"? Your definition seems very vague, and implies that any sort of software usability testing or change that involves offering different experiences to different users should be outlawed or very strictly controlled.
Take Mozilla Firefox as a recent example. Firefox 28 had a shitty, but at least partially usable user interface. Then Mozilla released Firefox 29, which brought in the Australis user interface, which is indisputably a pretty much unusable pile of feces. The psychological impacts of these changes are profound. Users who use Firefox 28 tend to be agitated due to its bad UI. But users who use Firefox 29 or later are often foaming at the mouth with outright anger over the horrible experience they're being subjected to.
Under your definition, it would be "wrong" to compare the user experience of those using Firefox 28 versus those using Firefox 29 or later without having them sign a bunch of paperwork.
What actually disturbs me more is: why should they do this? The answer is simple: They want to determine the most effective non-obvious way of creating filter bubbles to make the user feel well and stay longer.
It is so-to say a "second order filter bubble", i.e. the use of a positive feedback mechanism.
In ___a year___, ___a company___ Altered Content To Tweak Readers' Emotions Welcome to the dark, twisted, conspiracy-laden world of marketing.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's called the Common Rule, although it generally only applies to federally funded research. There is some evidence that this study was in part federally funded. I think there are serious questions about whether a click-through agreement meets the standards of informed consent.
Although the study was approved by an institutional review board, I'm surprised, and the comment from the Princeton editor makes me wonder how well they understood the research design (or how clearly it was explained to them). This would never have gotten past my IRB.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
So basically all they've done is tell us that people respond to their surroundings. Okay, nothing new there. What would be interesting is if FB could somehow start quantifying the level of the reaction. Then, after a few hundred years of study we might start to get the glimmerings of a science.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
... our stock is very happy ... buy our stock ... you like using Facebook ... you are happy when you use FaceBook ... buy our stock ...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have had my own posts removed from my newsfeed. That should be the bigger issue - I really doubt I've been singled out. (looks out window for black heli..._)
Your bias is showing, have you turned on MSNBC lately? or CNN, or looked at thinkprogress or drudge report??
both sides do it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Hey, Facebook! Can you help me with some experiments of my own? I'd like to see the outcome if...
1. Right before an election, all posts favoring candidate X or the political views of party X were promoted to the top of everyone's feed and given 20 extra fake "Likes", while posts favoring the opposition are demoted and de-liked.
2. Phrases in posts favoring candidate X or the political views of party X are subtly "edited" when the appear in everyone else's news feed to be more positive (e.g., "like" to "love", "good" to "great"), while phrases in posts favoring the opposition are given the reverse treatment and sprinkled with misspellings.
3. FB users with a tendency of opposition to party X have random fake posts/comments from them appear in other's feeds only, in which they insult their friends' baby pictures, make tasteless jokes, and vaguely threaten supporters of party X to "unfriend me if ur so lame u can't take the TRUTH, lol".
Koans and fables for the software engineer
this is junk science...not informed consent (buried in a EULA is not informed consent)
first and foremost, TFA description is wrong....TFA and the link research did NOT list what words make a post "positive" and "negative"
we cannot check their work by examining what factors they chose to represent the experimental variables
2nd, you're absolutely right that what people post to facebook.com is often not an accurate reflection of their current mood or actions
my only caveat is that some facebook users really don't care and genuinely post....but still, we all have a selection bias to posting something that others will see
3rd we cannot correleate the act of reading "bad" posts with posting "bad" posts by external observation only...you have to ask the person posting if **they think** what they are posting is "bad"
these researchers are idiots...really...
Thank you Dave Raggett
I am rather surprised that the National Academy published the results of a study which violated multiple ethical guidelines put in place to protect human subjects.
The only real point of being accepted to the National Academy is access to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They don't turn down anything from members.
For NA members, it's where you publish when nobody else will accept your paper.
Please help metamoderate.
Is /. doing the same thing?
this sig deleted by another sig
Facebook users gave up their privacy and allow their personal data to be mined. Posts have been used against them by employers, criminals, government agencies, various companies and Facebook. Facebook sells your data to advertisers and other organisations. This really comes as a surprise to anyone?
What Facebook has shown is that they can easily manipulate their users in a predicable manner. In this case it was for a study but is there anything stopping them doing something like this as a service to advertisers? Could companies pay them to manipulate their users in to buying there products? Advertising is all about some level of manipulation but Facebook has taken this to a new level by manipulation without actual ads that might alert users to the attempt to manipulate.
To be fair, I'd expect web search engines have become more about manipulated results than present real search data. I know Google was once a great place to search for information on a topic, now a search brings up mostly companies trying to sell you things and stupid sub-search bullshit where the search in run through other search engines to give more nonsense results. It isn't about searching the web anymore.
The research is (partly at least) army funded. That does explain why every academic ethic rule is ignored. Cornell has co-authored this research, so they can know. Check the last couples of lines to see for yourself. That part makes this even more disturbing. The media should include this 'small' detail. http://www.news.cornell.edu/st...
Facebook is profoundly useful though, as a messaging service that everyone uses and to keep abreast of things happening in friends' lives in a central, easy-to-access location. It's also quite useful when applying for jobs, because nothing says "social outcast" like not having a Facebook account.
Facebook is profoundly useful though, as a messaging service that everyone uses
I assure you that not "everyone" uses Facebook to communicate, including the majority of my social circle. Everyone I would actually communicate via Facebook to I can reach via some combination of email, phone, text messaging, instant messaging, US mail, fax, video conference etc. Not to mention actually meeting them in person. If you really need Facebook to stay in touch then you really aren't that close to begin with.
...nothing says "social outcast" like not having a Facebook account.
If you think Facebook is required to be in with the "cool" crowd then you need to seriously grow up. Nobody gives a shit whether I have a Facebook account or not. The quality of my life and the quality of other people's life is not the slightest bit reduced by not having a Facebook account. Same with Twitter. Facebook provides me precisely nothing that I need or want. If someone actually thinks I'm a "social outcast" because I choose not to use Facebook then that person is an asshole I want nothing to do with.
There is way too much discussion of Facebook's legal standing here, and if you have ever seen a moot court, you can use legal reasoning and even the body of the law to argue either side. The law is based on competing priorities like politics is, and like economics.
A more telling result is the impression the disclosure leaves, which is why the story has legs. It is abit like what happened to Donald Sterling; something that seemed OK in one context got leaked into a different context where it appears totally wrong. Powerful people have fallen recently based on this fact and all the PR departments all you corporate smuggies talk about cannot foresee and repair the damage once it is out. You can't put Hummpty together again.
I don't know if this will get all blown up. or it just dies. Given disclosures about Facebook privacy and how they seem to bias the feed, maybe this is nothing new. On the other hand if people think Facebook crossed the line and did illegal human experimentation then even if the issues become legally moot, the damage to the reputation of the company and Mark Zuckerburg, could be considerable, and ironies of ironies, an industry that thrives on impressions could be damaged by impressions, we can hope. I have become outspoken as a critic of the whole idea of Social Media, beginning with Google and I am rooting for reputations to get damaged and these companies are actually quite vulnerable. They are vulnerable to the same buzz they are constantly creating, a buzz that is often based in inueuendo and not supported by careful research and results which they knowingly bias. I think that the blog and social media are impediments to discussion and democratic processes. So. I am hoping for indications that invalidate their business model; that some of this is curtailed and reined-in. That risk is heaped on people who deserve it.