
Facebook's unethical experiment manipulated users' emotions - cmrivers
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/06/facebook_unethical_experiment_it_made_news_feeds_happier_or_sadder_to_manipulate.html
======
mabbo
155,000 users for each treatment of the experiment, says the paper. Let's
presume random selection, and that the occurrence rate of mental disorders is
the same for Facebook users as the general public (probably not too far off).
Then Facebook intentionally downgraded the emotional state of:

10,000 sufferers of Major Depressive Disorder

5,000 people with PTSD

4,000 bipolar disorder sufferers

1,700 schizophrenics

and a plethora of others with various mental disorders.

11/100,000 people commit suicide each year in America. How many were part of
that treatment of the experiment, without consent or knowledge?

As a scientist, I'm fascinated by the research. As a human being, I'm
horrified it was ever done.

[http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-
coun...](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-
disorders-in-america/index.shtml)

~~~
walterbell
> How many were part of that treatment of the experiment, without consent or
> knowledge?

How would this be determined in offline experiments where people volunteered?

~~~
Blahah
All subjects would have the potential consequences explained to them so they
could make an informed decision about whether to take part. Informed consent
is a very important ethical principle in human-subject experiments.

------
ajays
I'm puzzled about the outrage.

FB _already_ filters out updates based on some blackbox algorithm. So they
tweaked the parameters of that algorithm to filter out the "happier" updates,
and observed what happens. How is this unethical? The updates were posted by
the users' friends! FB didn't manufacture the news items; they were always
there.

I detest FB as much as the next guy, but this is ridiculous.

~~~
LoganCale
They altered people's feeds for a psychological experiment with the specific
intent of manipulating their mood. That is _highly_ unethical.

~~~
TeMPOraL
But why if it's done for science it's unethical, but when done by news
stations, politicians, advertising agencies, motivational speakers, salesmen,
etc. it's suddenly ok?

~~~
scintill76
Users of Facebook see it as a neutral platform for communicating with people
they know. Consumers of the things you listed know it's top-down messaging
coming from people they don't know or necessarily trust.

So, there is a difference. It's still a complex question, though -- is
filtering or prioritizing based on emotional sentiment really different from
what they are already doing with inserting ads and such?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I see it this way: they did a study, so it's fair.

Were they to filter posts by emotional sentiment as a part of their normal
operations, I'd find it unethical, or at least something I might not want. But
I'm totally fine with them subjecting users (including myself) to random
research studies, as those are temporary situations, and with Facebook's data
sets, they can have great benefits for humanity.

Perhaps Facebook should provide an opt-in option to for user to be a subject
of various sociological experiments at unspecified times. I'd happily select
it.

------
TeMPOraL
I strongly hope that they won't care about any of this "outrage" and continue
to do more and more experiments. Maybe even open it up as a platform for
scientists to conduct studies.

Facebook is in the unique position of possessing data that can be orders of
magnitude more useful for social studies than surveys of randomly picked
college students that happened to pass through your hallway. There's lot of
good to be made from it.

But the bigger issue I see here is why it's unethical to "manipulate user
emotions" for research, when every salesman, every ad agency, every news
portal and every politician does this to the much bigger extent and it's
considered fair? It doesn't make much sense for me (OTOH I have this attitude,
constantly backed by experience, that everything a salesmen says is a
malicious lie until proven otherwise).

~~~
DanAndersen
It's an interesting question. I have the same averse reaction to this story
that a lot of people here have, but I admit I also thought, "If Facebook
hadn't published this as research, but just had it as a business decision to
drive more usage or positive associations with the website, no one would
care."

My own way to reconcile this -- and I admit it's not a mainstream view -- is
that advertisement and salesmanship should be considered just as unethical. I
don't know how to quantify what "over the line" is, but it all feels like
brain-hacking. Things like "The Century of the Self" suggest that in the past
century or so we've become extremely good at finding the little tricks and
failings of human cognition and taking advantage of vulnerabilities of our
reasoning to inject the equivalent of malicious code. The problem is that when
I say "we" I don't mean the average person, and there's an every-growing
asymmetry. Like malware developers adapting faster than anti-malware
developers, most people have the same level of defense that they always have
had, while the "attackers" have gotten better and better at breaking through
defenses.

Sometimes I'll see discussions about "what will people centuries from now
think was crazy about our era?" and there's a part of me that keeps coming
back to the idea that the act of asymmetrically exploiting the faults of human
thinking is considered normal and "just the way things are."

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _My own way to reconcile this -- and I admit it 's not a mainstream view --
> is that advertisement and salesmanship should be considered just as
> unethical._

I agree with that, or probably think even more strongly - that
advertisements/sales are more unethical than research. It's difficult to put
limits though, because even if many salesmen clearly act maliciously, pretty
much everything you do or say influences people this way or another; it's how
we communicate.

What I'd love to see is Facebook creating an opt-in option for an user to be a
part of further sociological research. I'd gladly turn it on and be happy that
I'm helping humanity, while Facebook could limit their studies to people who
explicitly consented (there's an issue with selection bias though). They have
too good data to be not used for the betterment of mankind.

~~~
DanAndersen
Good point. I guess my concern -- recognizing this makes me sound like a
Luddite or someone going on about "humans were never meant to know about this"
\-- is that the results of research like this aren't going to be used for the
betterment of mankind. Rather, it'll be all about how to use a new mental
vulnerability to get more eyeballs on someone's content or to increase the
dopamine hits from browsing the site.

What I would love -- and what I would eagerly opt-in to -- would be a system
where Facebook could educate users on irrational behaviors. "We noticed that
60% of users like you spent an average of 30 seconds more looking at this kind
of content... this is because your brain etc etc etc". Creepy, perhaps, but if
there were a way to help people be more aware of and defend against
advertisement that would be neat.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Rather, it 'll be all about how to use a new mental vulnerability to get
> more eyeballs on someone's content or to increase the dopamine hits from
> browsing the site._

Sadly, you've made a great point here. It's very likely that the end results
of research will be used exactly for that - as it already happens with most of
psychology.

I hope though that some of that research will be used to create better
policies and help the society.

> _What I would love -- and what I would eagerly opt-in to -- would be a
> system where Facebook could educate users on irrational behaviors._

I'd happily opt-in to that as well (and opt-in all my relatives too ;)). I
don't expect Facebook to ever do that, as it'd exactly opposite to their goal
to be able to a/ influence their users, and b/ cater for advertisers, but
there already are websites doing exactly that (e.g. LessWrong). They're niche
places though; I'd love to see something popular enough to reach general
audience.

------
espeed
_Facebook’s Unethical Experiment: It intentionally manipulated users’ emotions
without their knowledge._

I'm not defending Facebook or the experiment, but if you're going to call them
out for "manipulating users' emotions without their knowledge", then you need
to call out every advertising, marketing, and PR firm on the planet, along
with every political talkshow, campaign, sales letter, and half-time speech...

~~~
pain
With that in mind, I'd find it important if our social media analytics
publicly accounted for such emotional manipulations.

It could be wise to begin to share such emotional-information influences to
equally let users and admins be so sensitive (and acknowledge its a real part
of our systems).

~~~
espeed
Users aren't fed every post by every one of their friends -- users would be
overwhelmed with posts flying by so fast they couldn't keep up -- so it's no
secret FB tweaks its feed algorithm to keep users engaged. And experimenting
with network effects is what social networks do.

Every time you see a picture of someone you like it's like a little shot of
dopamine goes off in your head. Facebook wants to optimize those dopamine
shots to continually bump engagement and create an experience where everyone
is habitually checking their feed every 10 mins.

This type of behavior design/economics research is done by Dan Ariely at MIT
("Predictably Irrational"
[http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html))
and the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab
([http://captology.stanford.edu/](http://captology.stanford.edu/)).

~~~
pain
Exactly why I'm trying to articulate importance of giving public facing
language to such persuasive technologies, by actually having formal public
markers for emotions being manipulated.

(e.g. Apple ad with astericks linking to emotional signaling research and
analytics, to help users determine deeper interests [this ad attracts people
who feel X, Y, Z based on...]).

------
kyro
To say this response is unnecessary and unfounded is disingenuous. Marc
Andreessen (whom I respect) tweeted _" Run a web site, measure anything, make
any changes based on measurements? Congratulations, you're running a
psychology experiment!"_ I could not disagree more.

This isn't simply a matter of looking at metrics and making changes to
increase conversion rates. The problem is that the whole of users have come to
expect Facebook to be a place where they can see any and all of their friends'
updates. When I look at an ad, I know I am being manipulated. I know I'm being
sold something. There is no such expectation of manipulative intent of
Facebook, or that they're curating your social feed beyond "most recent" and
"most popular", which seemingly have little to do with post content and are
filters they let you toggle.

What FB has done is misrepresent people and the lives they've chosen to
portray, having a hand in shaping their online image. I want to see the good
_and_ the bad that my friends post. I want to know that whatever my mom or
brother or friend posts, I'll be able to see. Someone's having a bad day? I
want to see it and support that person. That's what's so great about social
media, that whatever I post can reach everyone in my circle, the way I posted
it, unedited, unfiltered.

To me this is a disagreement between what people perceive FB to be and how FB
views itself. What if Twitter started filtering out tweets that were negative
or critical of others?

~~~
doctorpangloss
There are better ways to question the ethics of the experiment. Here's a
simple approach:

Would anyone want their emotions manipulated to be unhappy or unhealthy?

The corollary in a medical experiment would be, would a healthy person want to
undergo an experiment that could make them sick?

Some people mentioned advertising as a counterpoint, that what Facebook does
is not at all different from advertising's psychological manipulation. Well
maybe some forms of advertising ought to be regulated too. Would a child
voluntarily want their emotions manipulated by a Doritos ad to make the sicker
or fatter?

Even if it's not known what the outcome is, the two points are:

(1) Facebook's various policies specify you will randomly participate in their
studies, but

(2) It matters if an experimental outcome can harm you.

So even though you agreed to participate in experiments, you weren't told the
experiments could hurt you. That is a classic medical ethics violation, and it
ought to be a universal scientific ethics violation.

~~~
DanBC
> The corollary in a medical experiment would be, would a healthy person want
> to undergo an experiment that could make them sick?

Yes, many people would willingly volunteer to take experimental drugs that

i) might not work

ii) might uave severe side effects

because those people are dying and want some months more life.

~~~
notduncansmith
Note the parent comment said "healthy". Last I checked, healthy != dying.

------
masnick
I just wrote a blog post about the ethical/professional obligations of the
researchers associated with this study:
[http://www.maxmasnick.com/2014/06/28/facebook/](http://www.maxmasnick.com/2014/06/28/facebook/)

When you publish a paper, you are supposed to write in the body of the
manuscript if it's been approved by an IRB and what their ruling was. I'm
surprised it was published without this, even though it apparently was?

It's also appropriate to address ethical issues head-on in a paper about a
study that may be controversial from an ethical perspective.

If it really was approved by an IRB, then the researchers are ethically in the
clear but totally botched the PR.

If not, then I think the study was not ethical.

~~~
chmullig
It was approved by an IRB.

------
mryall
The difference between this experiment and advertising or A/B testing is
_intent_. With A/B testing and advertising, the publisher is attempting to
sway user behaviour toward purchasing or some other goal which is usually
obvious to the user.

With this experiment, Facebook are modifying the news feeds of their users
specifically to affect their emotions, and then measure impact of that
emotional change. The intention is to modify the feelings of users on the
system, some negatively, some positively.

Intentional messing with human moods like this purely for experimentation is
the reason why ethics committees exist at research organisations, and why
informed consent is required from participants in experiments.

Informed consent in this case could have involved popping up a dialog to all
users who were to be involved in the experiment, informing them that the
presentation of information in Facebook would be changed in a way that might
affect their emotions or mood. That is what you would expect of doctors and
researchers when dealing with substances or activities that could adversely
affects people's moods. We should expect no less from pervasive social
networks like Facebook.

------
azakai
Oh, please.

Every single time Facebook changes anything on their site it "manipulates
users' emotions". Show more content from their friends? Show less? Show more
from some friends? Show one type of content more, another less? Change the
font? Enlarge/shrink thumbnail images? All these things affect users on all
levels, including emotionally, and Facebook does such changes every day.

Talking about "informed consent" in the context of a "psychological
experiment" here is bizarre. The "subjects" of the "experiment" here are users
of Facebook. They decided to use Facebook, and Facebook tweaks the content it
shows them every single day. They expect that. That is how Facebook and every
other site on the web (that is sophisticated enough to do studies on user
behavior) works.

If this is "immoral", then an website outage - which frustrates users hugely -
should be outright evil. And shutting down a service would be an atrocity. Of
course all of these are ludicrous.

The only reason we are talking about this is because it was published, so all
of a sudden it's "psychological research", which is a context rife with
ethical limitations. But make no mistake - Facebook and all other
sophisticated websites do such "psychological research" ALL THE TIME. It's how
they optimize their content to get people to spend more time on their sites,
or spend more money, or whatever they want.

If anyone objects to this, they object to basically the entire modern web.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exactly. I find this situation to be an example of ridiculous pattern
matching. Is it published? Then it's a psychological experiment, and needs to
be evaluated by an ethics board. Is it just A/B testing? Then it's not
"science", so no need for ethics board.

~~~
dragonwriter
So as long as you aren't publishing the results of your experimentation, none
of the ethics that apply to experimenting on humans apply?

That's an...interesting...theory.

~~~
azakai
Any A/B test is "experimentation on humans". Facebook and all other web giants
constantly do such behavioral studies. The only difference is that this one
was published.

In other words, if someone argues that this was unethical experimentation on
humans, then there are 1,000 other studies we never heard of that are far, far
worse. But we know they exist.

It doesn't make sense to argue that. Websites have to experiment with
different ways of doing things, and seeing how that affects their users. This
isn't just a web thing either, of course - businesses need to try different
things in order to optimize themselves. And to measure which is the best to
get people to spend more.

------
ameza
I'm torn about this. In some ways, I can see how mental health issues can be
detected which can hopefully help us avoid these horrifying events (mass
shootings off the top of my head). But then again, I can see how the Army or
the government in general can control any type of popular uprisings. FB,
Twitter, etc have given us tools to connect and join in efforts to fix what is
wrong (I'm thinking the Middle East though that can be said about the Tea
Party or even Occupy movement). If the price is right, FB can hand over that
power (i.e. NSA) or through these secret courts, the Army/government can have
direct control of FB. It's crazy to think that this only occurs in countries
like Russia and China but wake up America! This is happening here as well!

------
ianstallings
You know why I think they are doing this? Because there have been studies
showing that people are miserable on facebook (see below) and I think people
are starting to pick up on it. So FB feels some pressure to lighten the mood a
bit. But as usual they do it with the subtlety of a drunken fool.

Also, the comparison to an A/B test is a false one. This is specifically to
alter the moods of the user and test the results in a study, not to improve
the users experience or determine which app version works better.

Regarding the study mentioned above:
[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/the-r...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/the-
real-reason-facebook-makes-us-unhappy.html)

------
resdirector
> Facebook intentionally made thousands upon thousands of people sad.

Hang on. Wasn't the experiment to see _whether_ users would post gloomier or
happier messages respectively? This very different from _intentionally_ making
people sad.

~~~
staunch
"I only silently removed happiness from your life because I was curious what
your reaction would be!"

~~~
csallen
Silently removed happiness from _my web application_ that you visit on a
voluntary basis. If you think my web app is too gloomy, feel free to stop
coming.

~~~
staunch
What if Gmail started silently removing happy emails from your Inbox by auto-
archiving them?

~~~
TeMPOraL
You expect GMail to show you every non-spam message sent to you in your inbox.
On Facebook, on the other hand, you expect a curated list of recent posts -
otherwise you wouldn't be able to keep up with what your 500+ friends and
1500+ liked pages post every day. So comparing GMail to Facebook makes no
sense at all.

~~~
staunch
Gmail users have an expectation that Google won't start silently diverting
their legitimate email as an experiment on them. That's the comparison if you
didn't quite grasp that.

You're claiming that users would "expect" Facebook to do something like filter
out all the happy posts from their friends and family without telling them? I
don't think many would agree with you.

~~~
csallen
I think he's merely claiming that you expect Facebook to curate the news feed.
_How_ they do so (and for what purpose) is ever-changing and has never been
fully transparent, thus your expectations for those particular factors is
irrelevant.

~~~
staunch
Yes. He's saying that their lack of transparency justifies their abuse. I'm
trying to explain that I disagree.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't see any abuse here, and I believe that their lack of transparency wrt.
filtering algorithms is justified.

First off all, the shortest description of what they do wouldn't probably be
far from publishing the algorithm iteslf. An algorithm that's ever changing
and probably different depending on where you live or to what group you were
randomly assigned. 99% of people wouldn't care anyway, and being transparent
about the algorithm would likely make them less happy - right now they accept
Facebook as is and don't think twice about it; give them the description of
how things work and suddenly everyone will start saying that Facebook
filtering sucks because random-reason-511.

Moreover, the only people that stand to benefit from knowing Facebook's
algorithm are advertisers, who will game the hell out of the system for their
own short-term benefit, just like they do with Google. It's something neither
Facebook users, nor Facebook itself want.

~~~
staunch
Sorry, you failed to comprehend what I said and I even made it really short.
Maybe try reading it a few more times.

------
mullingitover
This study really makes me feel vindicated for unfollowing all of my friends
along with every brand on facebook. I could've been part of the study but I'd
never know, since the only way I see my friends' posts is to visit their pages
directly where I can see them all unfiltered. I've been doing this for the
past six months and it has dramatically improved the way I interact with the
site. I can still get party invites and keep in touch with people, but I'm
immune to the groupthink.

------
mullingitover
I have a feeling a lot of college courses on research methods are going to use
this as an example of a grave ethics breach for years to come. With an
experiment group as large as they used, statistically it's almost inevitable
that someone in that group will commit suicide in the near future. If that
person is in the group that was targeted for negative messages, even a rookie
lawyer could make a sound case before a jury that Facebook's researchers have
blood on their hands.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
surely people have committed sucide after using facebook even without this
study. is facebook guilty of that, too?

you may argue that facebook was "trying to make people depressed" but that
simply isn't true. what if showing more of my friends negative status updates
actually _helps_ them? depressed people are shunned in our society; facebook
gave a voice to the voiceless. that's wonderful!

~~~
mullingitover
> you may argue that facebook was "trying to make people depressed" but that
> simply isn't true.

Legal culpability issues aside: did facebook manipulate people's emotions
intentionally? Did they inform them that they were going to do this, and of
the risks involved? Did they get their consent? If the answers to the last two
questions aren't unequivocally yes, then facebook is in deep trouble.

Edit: this also misses the problem that the subjects were never screened for
their basical ability to give informed consent. Merely clicking through the
ToS does not mean that you're not suffering from a mental illness that
nullifies their agreement to the ToS.

Lastly, this experiment clearly involved deception, since the test subjects
weren't informed up-front that they were being manipulated. This is
problematic[1] if the subjects weren't debriefed after the study:

>It is stated in the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
set by the American Psychological Association, that psychologists may not
conduct research that includes a deceptive compartment unless the act is
justified by the value and the importance of the results of such study,
provided that this could not be obtained in an alternative way. Moreover, the
research should bear no potential harm to the subject as an outcome of
deception, be it physical pain or emotional distress. _Finally, a debriefing
session is required in which the experimenter discloses to the subject the use
of deception in the research he /she was part of and provides the subject with
the option of withdrawing his/her data._

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent#Deception](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent#Deception)

------
danso
FWIW, the HN discussion on the study published on PNAS here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956470)

~~~
dang
Yes, and today's wave of media controversy about it hasn't added significant
new information, so I think this post counts as a dupe.

~~~
staunch
Heavens forbid the fluff piece on a Google executive gets pushed down the
page. I'm dumbfounded that you would kill this story. Hacker News is changing.

~~~
dang
Well, it was a borderline call, so I've restored the thread.

Perhaps I should explain our thought process. There were at least half a dozen
major web publications today putting out variants of this indignant post about
"Facebook's unethical experiment". Did all these authors suddenly develop a
passion for science ethics? Of course not. It is simply the internet
controversy du jour. Those have never made for good HN stories, and the policy
has always been to penalize them, because otherwise they would dominate the
site.

In cases of pile-on controversy like this one, when the original story has
already been discussed on HN—which is pretty common, because HN users tend not
to miss a day in posting these things—we usually mark the follow-up posts as
dupes unless they add important new information, or at least something of
substance. Does this article add anything of substance? It didn't strike me
that way, but arguably it does.

As for the PR fluff piece you think is on the front page, why haven't you
flagged it? It's impossible for us to catch (or even see) all such things. We
rely on users to point them out.

~~~
staunch
The idea that this story is "controversy du jour" is wrong in my view. I think
it's an incredibly important story and the underlying issue may be the biggest
in technology. At the very least it is not spam, gossip, or other obvious
junk.

The explicit HN policy used to be to allow controversies like this to wash
over the site. We all remember seeing the home page covered in many
submissions on the same topic. The fear that this would cause a topic to
"dominate the site" has been proven false numerous times. I'm not sure why
that would be a consideration.

I wasn't objecting to the puff piece on the home page. I don't think
lightweight stuff like that can dominate the site either.

~~~
tptacek
Complaints about stories taking over the entire front page of the site are as
old as the site itself. This comment might be the first one I've ever read
suggesting that the phenomenon was a good thing that we should preserve.

~~~
staunch
Who is going to decide how many stories on a topic we get to have? Should
there have been one Mt.Gox related submission? One Snowden related submission?
Up to one submission per day per topic? I'm not suggesting it's "good" I'm
suggesting it's better than the alternative.

Killing dupes when there is more than one active discussion is one thing. This
submission was the only active discussion on this topic. Removing it is just
editorial curation that is of no benefit to anyone at all.

~~~
dang
Those are good questions and I'd be happy to discuss them, but you seem to be
under the impression that HN didn't use to be intensively moderated. That
model is wrong. HN was always intensively moderated, curated, or whatever one
calls it. That's the only reason why you are able to write something like
this:

 _The fear that this would cause a topic to "dominate the site" has been
proven false numerous times._

That didn't prove itself false, nor did the community make it false; it was PG
who made it false. He poured countless hours into managing the site and
countless more into writing code to help manage it.

That model hasn't changed. It's more transparent now, because users asked for
it to be. Transparency has the side-effect of making it seem to some people
like we've fundamentally altered HN when it doesn't work like they assumed it
did.

~~~
staunch
Few people know better what PG, yourself, and others have done for this site
or appreciate it more than me. I've seen lots of threads get penalized or
killed and reversed. I know it hasn't been perfect in the past either.

I regret saying anything and I won't comment in the future. Thanks.

~~~
dang
Please don't regret saying anything and for heaven's sake please don't stop
commenting! This stuff is messy, unobvious, and unsatisfying. I'm painfully
aware that there's no way to make HN consistent, to satisfy everybody any of
the time, or anybody all of the time. The least bad job is all we can strive
for, and we can't do that without feedback.

Also, sorry for the snippiness in my tone above. I don't always succeed in
responding the way I want to.

------
ispolin
So does this mean that people can increase their happiness by using plugins
that hide negative posts from their social media?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Possibly, but only in the short run, as skewed perception of reality tends to
have long-term negative consequences. Which is precisely one of the reasons
why this kind of stuff is evil.

------
deepsun
Author falsely assumes that people changes their sharing behavior due to
changes in their mood. More likely they just feel like "everyone's posting
cats on Facebook, so that's a place for sharing cats, let me do too", or
otherwise.

------
nichodges
Before and/or after the fact, research participants are made aware that they
were part of a psychology experiment.

I wonder if Facebook plans on alerting subjects of this experiment to their
participation?

------
jevgeni
Isn't Slate in the business of exactly that: manipulating their readers
emotions?

~~~
reality_czech
Yes, but they're better at it than Facebook. They've got a bunch of gullible
illogical peasants about to ban A/B testing... or at least drive it
underground. For the children.

------
falconfunction
I just use Facebook to bookmark youporn at this point

------
onewaystreet
Been kind of surprised there hasn't been more of a reaction to this. I guess
the Internet has reached peak Facebook outrage.

------
pvdm
Another nail in the FB coffin.

Edit: for me at least.

~~~
jqm
And only 90,000 more nails to go before your average non-tech user who has
Facebook as their homepage drops them.

Until a replacement comes about and a large number of contacts move, it has
become such a large part of these peoples lives it isn't going anywhere.
Arguments and reasons don't sway them. Sadly.

I've never even been on facebook. But my girlfriend and extended family use it
religiously. My dad and a couple of other members finally dropped it as the
result of my rants but the rest (the vast majority) just think I'm suspicious
and nutty and go right on posting their entire lives.

So, facebook can pretty much do as they please. And apparently they do.

------
xyclos
people still use facebook?

------
dreamfactory2
> "If you are exposing people to something that causes changes in
> psychological status, that’s experimentation"

Or art, or journalism, or advertising, or football etc.

------
hawkice
Every business that makes sense will try to make its customers happier.

Showing people bad news to get more engagement has roughly the same moral
standing as the evening news.

I guess I don't get it.

[It must be wrong because they learned something from it, I guess?]

~~~
walterbell
What's your position on creating fake news to get more engagement? Some lines
are defended because the slippery slope on the other side is infinite.

~~~
cwyers
The thing about the slippery slope is that it is far more often a logical
fallacy than it is a real danger.

~~~
walterbell
[http://pando.com/2014/06/28/facebooks-science-experiment-
on-...](http://pando.com/2014/06/28/facebooks-science-experiment-on-users-
shows-the-company-is-more-even-powerful-and-unethical-than-we-thought/)

"Facebook itself could target certain users, whether they be corporate rivals
or current/former employees. Having such strong psychological control over
your workforce would certainly have its benefits. And if Facebook ever gets
caught? Why, the company could claim it’s all part of a social experiment, one
that users tacitly agreed to when they signed up.

With over one-tenth of the world’s population signing into Facebook every day,
and now with evidence to back the emotional power of the company’s algorithmic
manipulation, the possibilities for widespread social engineering are
staggering and unlike anything the world has seen. Granted, Facebook’s motives
probably are simply to convince people to buy more stuff in order to please
advertisers, but the potential uses of that power to impact elections or
global trade could be enticing to all sorts of powerful interest groups."

