Facebook promises to be more careful when toying with your emotions
Unlike the LGBT community, the 600,000 plus users who were tormented by Facebook Inc.’s emotional contagion experiment were not given an apology. The world’s largest social network did, however, provide guidelines on how future experiments would be conducted.
Earlier this year, Facebook published the results of its emotional contagion experiment. The experiment was conducted in order to determine if a study from 2011, which stated that seeing happy posts on Facebook made users sad, was valid. Close to 700,000 users were unwitting participants. Some users had positive posts restricted from their feeds, while others saw fewer negative posts. It was determined that the type of posts users see actually have very little influence on the users’ moods, based on what they, in turn, posted. Somehow, Facebook was surprised that users didn’t appreciate being manipulated for the sake of data science.
Facebook users agree to being experimented on when they accept the terms of having a Facebook account, and that’s not going to change. They will, however, be more careful during the experiment approval process. Studies that tinker with users’ emotions will require a more stringent review process. Essentially, Facebook is promising to be more responsible when it decides to mess with your head.
photo credit: basykes via photopin cc
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.
- 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
- 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network
Are you an AWS customer? Support SiliconANGLE financially by buying your AWS services from our Marketplace portal page and links: https://siliconangle.com/aws-marketplace/
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.
