Facebook ‘conducted widespread experiments’ on user data to ‘alter people’s behaviour

JMH · Jul 5, 2014

Researchers at the social media giant Facebook were given almost free rein to manipulate the news feeds and sometimes the emotions of many of the company's 1.3 billion users without their knowledge, a former employee has disclosed.

The company's data science team is said to have operated with virtually no supervision and little corporate oversight as it conducted experiments with such regularity that researchers worried that they were repeatedly using the same information.

Facebook ?conducted widespread experiments? on user data to ?alter people?s behaviour? - Telegraph

JMH · Jul 13, 2014

Facebook Facing Lawsuits For Their “Experiment”

Last week it was revealed that for a week back in 2012 Facebook had manipulated close to 700,000 of their user’s news feeds for an online psychological experiment. The premise was fairly simple; they wanted to see how people reacted to mostly all negative stories vs. mostly all positive stories. So, they removed positive stories from some users and they removed negative stories from other’s news feeds. The results weren’t too hard to predict – users who saw only negative stories posted more negatively, and those who saw positive stories posted more positively. It wasn’t exactly rocket science. But that simple experiment has all kinds of Facebook users up in arms, claiming that the social media giant violated their ethical rights and misused their personal data.

Facebook Facing Lawsuits For Their "Experiment" | TechBeat

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Facebook ‘conducted widespread experiments’ on user data to ‘alter people’s behaviour

JMH

Emeritus, Contributor

JMH

Emeritus, Contributor