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Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds)

<< Protests over secret study involving 689,000 users in which friends' postings were moved to influence moods. >>

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/30/1404117855529/d04e744c-6d6d-4692-b138-bee55323bfee-460x276.jpeg

Facebook emotion study breached ethical guidelines, researchers say

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say)

<< Lack of "informed consent" means that Facebook experiment on nearly 700,000 news feeds broke rules on tests on human subjects, say scientists. >>

Once again, for Facebook you're not the customer, the advertiser is the customer, and you are the product being sold; and now, you're also the lab animal

If people stopped treating FB like some sort of moaning tool then maybe they wouldn't need to do research like this. FB has died in my eyes, I use Twitter. People are way more positive on Twitter, and I find that folk on FB say things that they wouldn't reveal in face to face conversation. It's a social disaster.

Certainly this experiment was highly unethical, but the response from our government is just a bit amusing, considering they engage in this kind of activity all the time, not even as an experiment but positively counting on the fact that it works.

it’s not a big deal. Our emotions are manipulated all the time by media, advertising and interaction with other humans. Facebook users will not be leaving the network and 99% of them will not change the behavior as a response to this news. Move along, there are more important events taking place in the world. Unethical?

OMG people are manipulated by other people. Isn't that something? Politicians do it, rich people do it, poor people do it and of course Facebook does it. So politicians feel they have a right to stop facebook. WHY?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/30/1404125724358/816ebcf3-4b5f-4d6d-9cdd-b8f9763b5879-460x244.jpeg

How does Facebook decide what to show in my news feed?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-news-feed-filters-emotion-study (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-news-feed-filters-emotion-study)

<< Controversial emotion study is a reminder that the social network's filters are constantly at work in the background. >>

"Clay Johnson, the co-founder of Blue State Digital, the firm that built and managed Barack Obama's online campaign for the presidency in 2008, said: 'The Facebook 'transmission of anger' experiment is terrifying.'"
 :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Meh facebook is pretty useless now. I have an account to stay in touch with people but I haven't been an active user in over 2 years. It isn't surprising that they would do something like this. Ethics don't really matter in the facebook world. 

It worked for me, i got so fed up with my news feed winding me up with people commenting on their drab lives and me constantly reading it wondering what I’m doing with my life i deleted it off my phone and I'm all the better for it. Thanks facebook, worked a treat for me!

Stopped using Facefook years ago, never really liked putting all my personal info into a CIA database.

Everyone should stop using facebook. These "researchers" are not observers anymore, they are actively blocking newsfeeds.

Still more people joining facebook and leaving.

The customer are advertisers, the secret service (NSA, CIA), FBI and your future employers. Apparently, psychologists are also interested in the data now.
Your data (and page views) is the product. Its a model that pays well, but its very unethical and straight in contrast with freedom, if anything, it has made us Americans less free.

For the well being of society we should demand weekends Internet & TV FREE! There will be no NHS problems and people will be less obese and will start actually see each other more since they will have to do something about their weekends rather than sit and scroll through FB or watch TV. It will benefit all of us. It is that simple!

I have to confess I'm kind of addicted to Facebook.  But seeing this is kind of the last straw.  I'm planning on quitting FB after getting contact information for all the people I want to stay in touch with.  I guess the only frustrating thing about quitting is that it's so ingrained amongst my friends for inviting people to events and such that I'm positive I'll miss out on social engagements if I quit.  So I'm torn, the company is highly unethical, but I am getting a benefit out of it.  I wonder if I could persuade the 20 or 30 people on FB whose posts I really care about seeing to decamp to Diaspora, probably not though, FB has the network effect going for it, just like bitcoin does.  That's the only social network that's actually good in my opinion.  

You could invite everyone to Daispora https://www.diasp.org/ (https://www.diasp.org/) or a similar network :) I even have a basic social network software I made on my computer, that I could put online. - but I don't think anyone is interested. The main problem users have (I never used it) is that their friends are on it.

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Facebook apologises for psychological experiments on users

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users)

<< The second most powerful executive at the company, Sheryl Sandberg, says experiments were "poorly communicated". >>

You're right, I could, but I doubt they'd bother joining.  That is the Catch 22 that new social networks and people like me who want to move to another social network.  Any other social network doesn't have the critical mass of people that Facebook has, and people aren't terribly inclined to join until it does have that critical mass.  This is why I didn't join FB until getting peer pressured into joining.  I knew about it long before 2008 when I setup my account, but I knew I'd get addicted to it, so I didn't join until that point.  But this whole news feed experiment they did annoys me enough that I'm inclined to quit anyway despite the events that I'd miss.  I mean, we do still have phones and email, there are old fashioned ways of communicating with people, they just take a tiny bit more effort.

This is the problem exactly. It is not a problem of technology, and never has been. There's nothing special about FB, just a simple web system that has a lot of government/media promotion. VKontakte is very big, but I don't know what they do with all the data.To be honest, I don't trust these guys a lot either..
 

I just don't like the idea that they are screwing around with my news feed. I want to see updates and news without Facebook tailoring shit to me to try to see how I will react emotionally. What if they caused someone to commit suicide? Think of the children!!!!

Facebook is fashion nowadays. FB times will pass until then I will advertise my business there, because I am really satisfied of the results. Facebook is just crowded of commercials. Also must to say that FB is not a place for kids !!! I am really get scared of what kids see and do in FB. Parents must be more aware of what their children do on the net.
BR
Gondel

This is what Britain First are doing on Facebook with their emotional posts in the process if promoting their extreme right wing agenda. However Facebook fail to remove them or are they complicit in the same vain?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/7/4/1404476570376/5159f628-e589-430c-95de-f4583cbd6b75-460x276.jpeg

Privacy watchdog files complaint over Facebook emotion experiment

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/04/privacy-watchdog-files-complaint-over-facebook-emotion-experiment (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/04/privacy-watchdog-files-complaint-over-facebook-emotion-experiment)

<< US privacy pressure group files complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission over use of user data without consent. >>

Facebooks removes any content they want off the site, or don't want you to see.

I've heard about this
Facebook forgot its core business is to be social media not stalking data media.

Jim Sheridan, a member of the Commons media select committee, said the experiment was intrusive. "This is extraordinarily powerful stuff and if there is not already legislation on this, then there should be to protect people," he said. "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."

Anyways I can see this Zuckerberg moment

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
- A 19 year old Mark Zuckerburg during an IM exchange
Not sure much has changed...
[Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims-from-college-2014-2?op=1]

I wonder what Mark did to piss them off? I hate Facebook and media manipulation, but it's not like media manipulation isn't rampant and effectively legalized by the government, pushing people into all sorts of other scams (hidden government money you can apply for, reverse mortgages, Mexican time-shares, jobs you pay for, "free" stuff you can "cancel at any time," some of the dog-dumbest coin collections ever produced, and GOLD, GOLD, GOLD! BUY IT NOW! Look at these charts from '08-'10! It's going through the ROOF! You can sure trust G. Gordon Liddy and the outlandish 15% markup over spot his company charges after bloated S&H charges! Don't forget the magic stuffed animal your kid's gonna scream about for the next ~3 minutes because some advertiser thinks it's okay to do false-marketing to three-year-olds so long as they put disclaimers in blurry 4pt font at the bottom of the screen, "toy does not actually do anything we've just shown") through ads on TV, newspaper, Facebook, and Craigslist. I've never noticed the scammy stuff on radios -- maybe they self-regulate or something.

I mean - come on, the big scandal's that Facebook's going to be used as a tool to make a bunch of couch potatoes playing Farmville angry, not because of manipulative imagery and slogans, but because Facebook fiddles with a constant stream of mostly useless data, discovering when 80% of stories are about dogs and people cops've shot in the past year, people are pissed off? Maybe the USG's scared. :D

IMO this is really not that big of a deal. The results were that seeing more sad status updates resulted in a very small percentage increase in sad status updates by the person seeing them. I would even argue that the results are not statistically significant.

The only real "issue" is that facebook did not disclose the fact that they were doing the testing, but if they had disclosed then the results could have been compromised.

Who cares? They agreed to facebooks bullshit when they accepted the terms on signup.

I think they didn't if they were early adopters but then again they send out those privacy notices for people so I guess that is partially true
Doesn't stop lawsuits though if there is a possible problem to address here.
http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-experiment-raises-legal-questions-could-lawsuit-follow-mood-manipulation-research-1615970

Actually, that's not true.  I just read through their Terms of Service (https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms) and absolutely nothing in there says that, "you agree to accept us experimenting on your emotions without informed consent or compensation."  At least that's what I'd imagine they'd say to try and catch something like this. 

Sounds about right don't think the privacy agreement said we can tinker directly with what posts you see to make you happy or sad at our whim for scientific studies.

AFAIK there is nothing in their TOS that says they will display the same newsfeed to every user. I also believe that their privacy policy says that they will try to tailor your newsfeed and ads displayed to you specifically