

U.K. to Probe Facebook Emotion Study - T-A
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/01/uk-to-probe-facebook-emotion-study/

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electromagnetic
Just my 2 cents, but I'm going to wager that facebook didn't sufficiently
anonymize the data. I'm basing this on the fact that facebook merely skewed
the existing data.

I wish government officials would at least get with the 1990's. I'm guessing
this was little different than switching between the 'hot' and 'controversial'
tabs on a reddit page. No data was changed or modified, just the way it was
displayed.

It was AB testing with winks and frownie faces.

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cscurmudgeon
The technical complexity is at the level of AB testing, but the effect is
emotional manipulation.

This is ethically murky as people don't sign up to be emotionally manipulated
by FB for $. People assume that they would be shown all the good and the bad
from their friends.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research_legislat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research_legislation_in_the_United_States)

~~~
Throwaway0812
Isn't everything in the media designed to manipulate our emotions? I mean,
those commercials to sponsor children in Africa, trying to make you feel
guilty, and how for just the price of your morning coffee you can keep Timmy
off the streets, and eating well?

You can argue FB relies on user content, but then I can compare that to
reality TV shows, and how they'll take real-life footage, and manipulate it to
trigger emotions.

For example, American Idol will paint a picture of someone struggling their
whole life, and how this is their one opportunity for success after being
fired from McDonalds and having their cat pass away. Then just as you're
feeling sorry, they light up the stage, and you rejoice. Meanwhile, they
forgot to tell you that person had professional training twice a week for the
past 10 years, they won two other singing competitions earlier in the year,
and live in a beautiful neighborhood, but that doesn't play into the emotions
they want you to feel, and that doesn't get you to watch next week.

Or a show like Survivor, and how they'll take footage, and try to fabricate
relationships and drama out of thin air. This way you become angry towards one
character that'll be in the finale, and are likely to tune in to ensure they
don't win.

Why can't Facebook do the same? Why can't they analyze and manipulate user
emotions to increase business?

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cscurmudgeon
Watching a show and getting emotional is something that we do of our own will.

In my lab, a PhD student had to get permission from the IRB to conduct a
simple study that looked at how good people were at critical thinking. There
are reasons why this is regulated.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board)

~~~
Throwaway0812
We do at our own will? So if I'm watching a movie and everyone in the theater
is in tears, it has nothing to do with the director trying to create a sense
of emotion and sadness, but it was just our own choice?

I'd think Facebook has even less control, and more difficultly predicting
emotions. For example, if Facebook displays a post about Jane having a bad day
and losing her job, that's bad news. However, it's difficult to determine how
I'll react. It might be comforting for me to know someone else is having a bad
day, it might make me angry that Jane lost her job, when I lost my job at the
same business the week prior, it might make me happy because Jane is always
bragging about her job, and I no longer have to hear about it.

When it comes to a movie, I think there's a lot more control since you write
the script and characters from start to finish. Every person in the audience
has the same relationship with those characters, and knows them for their
entirety. You also have fine grain control over the visuals, combined with
carefully selected music. As I said earlier, all of this can lead to a room
full of people leaving the theater in tears, so I don't see the difference.

Or, when you say we do at our own will, you mean we make the choice to visit
the theater in the first place? That would be no different than making the
choice to visit Facebook. If anything, you should be questioning every
advertising campaign in existence. They're carefully crafted to evoke a
certain emotion, and they work specifically because they can manipulate
people. At the same time, people have no choice to view them, they're
constantly exposed to these manipulations just by walking outdoors or visiting
the store to buy groceries.

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cscurmudgeon
Going to the theater is our choice. We want our emotions to be changed when we
go to a movie. In Facebook, I want the raw feed from my friends, not some
emotionally filtered feed. I don't want to get into a debate on free will. Do
you think laws on human experimentation should be removed?

You argument is basically a milder analog of _" Humans die from all kinds of
causes so let us let murderers walk free."_

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Throwaway0812
Right, _you_ want the raw feed, but it's up to Facebook whether or not to
provide it, and it's up to you whether or not to consume it.

This is no different than a television series like I mentioned earlier. You
can argue you want the raw footage from a reality television show, and not the
heavily edited version designed to manipulate your emotions, but that's not
your choice.

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cscurmudgeon
Facebook promises the raw feed, but supplies something else. Nowhere in their
contract they say they do emotional filtering.

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Throwaway0812
Where does it say they provide the raw feed? Everywhere I look in the Facebook
help, terms and privacy policy it mentions how they use algorithms to
determine what stories appear, and how they use information provided by users
to pick stories. They also mention using user information for internal testing
and analysis.

They seem to be following those terms, they were choosing positive and
negative stories for feeds, and then analyzing the data to see if users then
posted more positive or negative posts in return.

1\. '...we may make friend suggestions, pick stories for your News Feed, or
suggest people to tag in photos...'

2\. 'The News Feed algorithm uses several factors to determine top stories...'

3\. 'How we use the information we receive... for internal operations,
including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service
improvement.'

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cscurmudgeon
Then why is the UK pursuing them?

You did not answer my other question. Here is a more direct question.

Should Facebook be exempt from laws on human experimentation?

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Throwaway0812
The UK is free to look into the Facebook experiment and to pursue the case.
That alone doesn't make Facebook guilty of anything. They didn't go to a court
of law, Facebook wasn't proven guilty of breaking the UK Data Protection Act,
they're just investigating whether proper precautions were taken.

Facebook should obviously be bound to the same laws as everyone else. Which
human experimentation laws did they break? Users registered on Facebook and
agreed to the terms of service, and how Facebook will choose which stories
they view, and analyze their response.

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chriskanan
In this case, punishing Facebook is less likely to halt this kind of
experimentation than it is to halt publication of the experiments.

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hadoukenio
$10 the UK drops any investigation as the US Department of Defense was behind
the research:

    
    
      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-01/was-department-defense-behind-facebook%E2%80%99s-controversial-manipulation-study

