Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer ran an experiment on 689,003 Facebook users two and a half years ago to find out whether emotions were contagious on the social network. It lasted for a week in January 2012. It came to light recently when he and his two co-researchers from Cornell University and University of California-SF published their study....

...The idea of Facebook manipulating users’ emotions for science — without telling them or explicitly asking them first — rubbed many the wrong way. Critics and defenders alike pointed out that Facebook’s “permission” came from its Data Use Policy which among its thousands of words informs people that their information might be used for “internal operations,” including “research.” However, we were all relying on what Facebook’s data policy says now. In January 2012, the policy did not say anything about users potentially being guinea pigs made to have a crappy day for science, nor that “research” is something that might happen on the platform.

Four months after this study happened, in May 2012, Facebook made changes to its data use policy, and that’s when it introduced this line about how it might use your information: “For internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.”...

....Defenders of the Facebook study including my colleague Jeff Bercovici say that everyone on the Internet is doing A/B testing — showing users two versions of something to see which resonates more based on how they click, share, and respond. But says Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum. “This isn’t A/B testing. They didn’t just want to change users’ behaviors, they wanted to change their moods.”

Alles bij de bron; KashmirHill op Forbes