Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Apologized Over The Lack Of Communication About A Psychological Experiment.

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.

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