News Facebook hit by privacy furore over emotion experiment

I don't see why people are up in arms about being used as guinea pigs, it's not like names have been named, it doesn't seem any harm was done by tinkering with the news feeds.

I would be more concerned with the government monitoring their own citizens on social media, or "research" company's using our tax and medical records for financial gain.

 

What is really annoying about it is that we never find out about all the other experiments that Facebook does for itself. And even more that none seem to care about being a guinea pig for that multinational, personal information colecting company...

 

I'd prefer to know what i'm taking part in.. Possibly. At least i'd know what I may be helping contribute towards!

 

although i don't particularly care... i can see how this is not cool.

Scenario, Fiona, has depression, her facebook feed is then targeted to potentially bring on further depression, becoming the icing on the cake to her potential self harm.

 

Personally, I could do with a feature that drops negative posts further down my News Feed. In fact, if they could find a way to completely eliminate the "OMG my life iz so unfare mum buyed me da mercades an i wanted da bmW FML #whatislife #the99% #YOLO" posts I'd pay Facebook myself. The day they allow me to press a button and have those people punched with a deck chair that flies out of their computer screen is the day I can die laughing a happy man.

 

But then that could have made the results invalid.

If they had pushed negative results to the top you would have a point, but as they done the opposite they made the world a happier place

 

Just be more selective who you add as a friend and refuse anyone you haven't known for a long time in real life.

 

Or request your facebook account be deleted and do other stuff instead like ride bicycle and grow watermelon.

 

[foil hat] Anyone else troubled that a group that likely had a government grant is studying ways to manipulate the population?[/foil hat]

 

This is pretty much exactly my thinking. They're constantly manipulating newsfeeds for their own gain, so the fact they're doing it for a social experiment is, if anything, an improvement!

 

But she promised me naked pictures!

 

I don't care whether they have named any of their guinea pigs. The fact is they decided what news people were allowed to view for the duration of the experiment. I do not believe anybody has the right to tell me what I can see on my newsfeed. My Facebook friends are real life friends. Pages I like and groups I subscribe to I do so because I want the information they share. What gives anyone the right to tell me which posts I can view?

It's bad enough that they keep changing my news view to what they call the top stories. Surely they don't think I am incapable of deciding for myself which are the best stories?

Likewise. I do not want to be used in any experiment that I did not give permission for, except perhaps something psychopharmacological

 

But they did not decided what new people could view, they just pushed the positive news stories to the top of the list. As it says in the article "content which had been rated as being emotionally negative being dropped down the News Feed in favour of more positive content."

Unlike some governments they did not dictate what you were allow to view, they didn't block any content, it was all still there just lower down the list.