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Ask Slashdot: Is There an Ethical Way Facebook Can Experiment With Their Users?
An anonymous reader writes: This summer, news broke that Facebook had conducted an experiment on some of their users, tweaking which posts showed up in their timeline to see if it affected the tone of their later posts. The fallout was extensive — Facebook took a lot of flack from users and the media for overreaching and violating trust. (Of course, few stopped to think about how Facebook decided what to show people in the first place, but that's beside the point.) Now, Wired is running a somewhat paranoid article saying Facebook can't help but experiment on its users. The writer says this summer's blowback will only show Facebook they need to be sneakier about it.
At the same time, a study came out from Ohio State University saying some users rely on social media to alter their moods. For example, when a user has a bad day, he's likely to look up acquaintances who have it worse off, and feel a bit better that way. Now, going on social media is going to affect your mood in one way or another — shouldn't we try to understand that dynamic? Is there a way Facebook can run experiments like these ethically? (Or Twitter, or Google, or any similarly massive company, of course.)
At the same time, a study came out from Ohio State University saying some users rely on social media to alter their moods. For example, when a user has a bad day, he's likely to look up acquaintances who have it worse off, and feel a bit better that way. Now, going on social media is going to affect your mood in one way or another — shouldn't we try to understand that dynamic? Is there a way Facebook can run experiments like these ethically? (Or Twitter, or Google, or any similarly massive company, of course.)
No.
Ethical and Facebook have nothing in common.
why do people think Facebook needs to be ethical over law abiding?
Scientists request it all the time through their internal review board, This isn't really a complex issue, which is why the approach facebook took is considered underhanded and skeevy.
Stop using it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Including this one.
-Zuckerberg.
http://gawker.com/5636765/face...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If you make FB the gatekeeper of all your communications, don't bitch when they act as such.
Pretty simple.
MOD THE PARENT UP!
Yes, it's very simple:
"Dear Facebook user, Facebook is conducting a study to better understand our users. The study will last 2 weeks and no personally identifying information will be recorded. You will likely not notice any difference to Facebook while it's going on. By helping with this study you will help to improve facebook for everyone! Do you consent to be a part of this study?" Y/N
It's called "informed consent"
Doctors give placebos to deathly sick patients all the time for research purposes.
Patients agree beforehand just as FB users and those aren't even (that) sick.
Awww poor baby.
There is nothing ethical about Facebook to begin with.
To quote The Hound..."Social media is for cunts."
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Say that you're "trying out something new on the server". End result is that it's a potential improvement to the service that you are "trying out" rather than human experimentation which sounds scary and stuff.
Facebook is crap for a number of reasons, but not because they do what most people with webpages do.
For example, when a user has a bad day, he's likely to look up acquaintances who have it worse off, and feel a bit better that way.
That sounds automatable. Schadenfreude, the browser extension.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The only ethical way to perform human experiments is by getting prior consent from the subjects. It's usually pretty easy to get in exchange for a small incentive; university psychology departments can get college students to sign up for just about anything for $10 and a chance to win an iPhone.
Carl Sagan once commented (can't recall where) on the general aversion people hold toward the government conducting experiments in public policy. He then detailed how every change of law was an experiment of sorts, although often without proper controls.
If Facebook should be required to inform consumers of how they experimentally manipulate them then should Kellogg's reveal the details of how they use marketing to manipulate kids into buying Fruit Loops?
...where the subjects behaviour changes when he knows he's being observed is the simple expedient of not letting the subject know he's being experimented on.
The simple solution to this is to append the TOU with a clause that allows Facebook to conduct blind studies into behaviour by shaping traffic *on a randomised and anonymous basis*. Individual users are NOT informed when their account is being used in a study - they've already agreed to let it happen.
*For definition of "randomised and anonymous" in context, read: base the collection on randomly chosen user IDs, and the analysis starts by dropping the UID information and manipulating just the data.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Just add a small randomness factor for everybody. Afterwards, try to find patterns in people's behaviour.
Because that's what people expect from every person and every company in the world?
Moreover, in case of experiments there are traditionally institutionalized ethical codes above the law in the form of scientific honor committees and ethics commissions as part of the (supposed) academic self-control in science. For example, a university can take away your PhD degree in case of plagiarism even if it has no direct legal implications because e.g. no copyright claims are made and the plagiarizer has not sworn an oath.
Last time, Facebook and the scientists involved have broken laws (at least in Europe, insofar as European users were involved) and violated basic ethical standards of academia. It was a very bizarre case, because it's completely clear to every scientist what the standards are, they are written down in ethical guidelines of universities, and you have to fill out forms to guarantee them. It's not very hard to do it the right way, and it's very hard to involuntarily violate the common ethical standards.
(Of course, few stopped to think about how Facebook decided what to show people in the first place, but that's beside the point.)
No, it's the entire point. Your stream, to the extent that it's "your" stream, is already manipulated in ways you're not told, based on what Facebook thinks you will find interesting, funny, or engaging enough to come back and see more ads. Experiments have to happen as part of Facebook's desire to expand, if only to see which manipulations mean more ads displayed. The only difference is that now the people who are interested in something closer to science than ad sales at Facebook won't tell us about their results. Are you happy?
Is There an Ethical Way Facebook Can Experiment With Their Users?
Ethics don't count if they don't get caught and if they do it's the same old bullshit every single time.. Say sorry>wear ethics cap>lay low> time to fuck with people.... again
I think the way to respond to this and to targeted advertising is to figure out a system to invalidate their effort.
Is There an Ethical Way Facebook...
No.
When asking these questions, stop using Facebook and substitute wit, "Facebook stockholders."
That answers that question.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The whole point here is that you need somebody else who is not the experimenter to sign off on the experiment when humans are involved. We call those people the IRB.
What's that, tech industry? You think a/b testing would be impacted? That's a popularity contest, not an experiment. Facebook's experimet had the specific goal of being able to manipulate the emotions of their users, which goes far beyond simply asking which website layout they find more attractive or useful.
What's that, tech industry? You think it would take way too much time if you had to get approval for experiments? Then throw together a multi-company group to found your own IRB. I'm sure there are universites that would be willing to partner with that group to lend their advice and help the group get started quickly.
What's that, tech industry? You think that there is not way you could conduct your experiments if you had to get proper informed consent, (which has specific criteria - an EULA or TOS does not count)? First: welcome to the club. Sometimes, doing proper and ethical experiments is hard. Many disciplines have tog deal with that, and I guarantee it is easier to find alternative ways to test your theories about "social media" than it is for the psychologist trying to investigate complex mental health issues, and both of those areas of research get to skip the whole "untested, unknown, and probably horribly dangerous new drug" mess that some doctoroso have to find a way to test without killing the participants.
Worse - and this betrays the total and complete ignorance of the people at Facebook that ran this experiment - if they had bothered to ask an IRB like you are supposed to, there is a good chance they could have gotten some requirements such as having to get informed consent in advance could have been waived. Their experiment simply wasn't that risky, compared to most experiments involving human testing.
TL;DR - If the tech industry decided to work with the process and bothered to ask an IRB, they would have avoided a lot of bad PR. Their failure to do this - and their insistence afterwords that even a trivial "trust but verifyf" is the kind of thing that only applies to *other people* only serves to make people fear the entire insutry. Justifiably. Would you want to buy stuff from people that avoid every ethics regulation?
Of course, I haven't addressed any of the state laws, some of which have even stronger requirements...
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
Well, fuck all facebook users, stop using the fucking service that feeds and supports the company. You want to keep in touch with friends? here is a brilliant idea, fucking call them up. It's the same thing with the internet monopoly, just stop using that particular ISP that fucks you with the caps and billing or just stop using the internet altogether. Of course Facebook is an asshole company because it's run by one.
I don't see why facebook testing new algorithms and filters on the results they serve up to their users is considered unethical. Nearly every major website and a large portion of minor websites does this constantly, without consent. And consent isn't needed, because the visitor is voluntarily consuming the output of the website.
This was a big furor over nothing, by people that don't understand how websites work.
That's all there is to it.
Why can't we have something (a program?) like facebook, without the need for a centralized server? Whoever writes the program first, will be rich.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Sure, a set of anonymized, randomized set of users at the beginning and ensure they remain anonymous throughout the study, then do the study. The question is whether FB can truly anonymize the data they are studying. I would place a wager that they cannot. There is so much information creep in FB that anonymizing the data may not be possible.
Second solution, give the research projects to people who truly have no interest in the data or the results.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
What do you people think the cost of using a "free" social network is going to be? Nothing?
No, you're cattle. That's the price.
"look up acquaintances who have it worse off, and feel a bit better"
I for one welcome our Schadenfreuding overlords!
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Forgive me for raising a stupid question, but what expectation / right do we have to expect that Facebook is a certain way, or behaves in a certain way? Or shows you content without adulteration? It's not a fundamental government service, or anything we even paid for, after all.
For all we know if could be designed as a parody website, and shows us things that our friends looked at, modulated by some sarcasm filter.
Everything that Facebook shows us is an experiment. And you object because they adjusted the experiment slightly? You don't have to approve every time when your homepage feed loads up, showing you stories that were determined by some algorithm,so why should Facebook seek your approval when something slightly different is shown? Because they adjusted the thresholds for displaying stories by 5%?
Stop trusting other people's websites so much, and expecting anything from them, for that matter. When Facebook is declared to have a public service obligation, maybe then you can demand these things.
To the OP. Yes, of course Facebook can run experiments ethically, they're doing it all the time. All corporations do - "which color packaging on our box of soap sells more"? Count sales, over, done, next. They're a corporation, which is a legal entity, so their studies need to be legal, or some government will make it impossible for them to do business. Can they run experiments "like these" ethically - probably, but defining "ethics" is a lot harder - call the philosophers! According to the ultimate benchmark, Wikipedia, "Ethics, sometimes known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy...". Facebook's ethics, come from their management and shareholders. If a study is against the law, see above, if goes against their users' wishes, they can just not come back.
Every website does A/B testing. Every website.
Go read "Lean Startup" -- which is the bible for tech start-ups. At least 80% of that book is about A/B testing and how it should be integrated into your product from the start, and how it should be in use constantly.
Facebook very existence is based on extracting and modeling user data. If you are too naive to understand this and what it implies, then you should not be using a computer. That's why 13 year old's are off limits. How did you come to believe that Facebook was a charity?
IMO, It's ethical to collect and use data on people that has been stripped of identifying information -- census data, for example, is a major element of sociology research. You still need an institutional review board, but it can be OK. Where Facebook went wrong was by changing things for people to try to manipulate them.
In short: anonymous "read only" experiments on human subjects are OK; "read/write" experiments are a no-go without explicit individual consent and monitoring.
("But if we can't manipulate individuals, how can we set up a good controlled experiment that can distinguish correlation from causation?" Good question, but that's your problem, not mine.)
That is all... just ask people to opt in. If they do... go crazy with it. And try to reward them proportionately for it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
How can the means be ethical if the goal is not? Whether the means are ethical or not is irrelevant in that case.
MOD THE PARENT UP!
No way. He linked to Beta!!!! I'd rather mod up a goatse link.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
All they have to do is put up a new login/greeting page that reads "Welcome to Facebook, test subject 42. All your actions are belong to us."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Informed consent is required which is no some bullshit buried in TOC. It would have to be opt-in and clearly defined to all participants. Honesty is not something that facebook understands so this wouldn't be possible for them...
I believe there is an ethical way for Facebook experiment with the feelings of the users. It starts with taking them out to a dinner and a movie, and you know, see how it goes from there on.
As much as i dislike facebok... they did nothing wrong here.
pondering the effects of their site.
testing it
publishing results
great - hopefully the insane backlash wont stop them showing future tests publicly.
if you dont want FB to find out theeffects of their site on you... don't use it.
Facebook should not represent itself as one thing and then do otherwise. It's too easy to become a tool of the fascist state; think 1984.
http://www.motherjones.com/mix... Were these only 'public' Facebook accounts, or private accounts or both? Did anyone think it was creepy that they are scraping Facebook posts for research without informing the subjects that they are being researched on?
It's called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron
Casteism