

Facebook 'Permission' for 'Research' 4 months After Emotion Manipulation Study - 001sky
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/30/facebook-only-got-permission-to-do-research-on-users-after-emotion-manipulation-study/

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a3n
Facebook conducted psychological _experiments_ on _people_ , to see what would
happen when they made people feel bad. Or to see if they could make people
feel bad. Or to see what might make people feel bad. Not sure, doesn't matter.

Facebook is OK with this because it's part of making them billions of dollars.
It's not the fallback to their ToS that makes them OK with it, it's the
dollars. The ends have always justified the means.

Facebook did not have people's informed consent, whether their ToS said
"Research" before, during or after the experiment, or ever, or always. I have
never seen an informed consent form, but I am certain that it is not hundreds
of page scrolls long, with a single word "research" buried in it to imply that
you've accepted any and all future experiments, as one of many, many subjects
focused on in the ToS. Informed consent, I'm quite sure, is the only subject
of a legitimate informed consent form. When you read one, I'm quite sure that
you know you're reading about informed consent and only informed consent, and
it might reasonably take between ten and thirty minutes to get a more or less
complete understanding of the complete document.

 _No one_ understand a complete ToS a la Facebook and their ilk, except the
lawyers who wrote it, and the lawyers who might sue in its context.

The guy in Facebook who did this should be fired. You know that he knew people
didn't know they'd given permission. The barest, molecule thin fig-leaf of an
excuse is "well, ToS, and our lawyers said." ToS for psychological
manipulation is the last, indefensible refuge of an evil, evil scoundrel.

Of course he won't be fired, because he helped contribute to future billions
of dollars for Facebook. The ends have always justified the means. _Fuck_ you.

The academics should be disciplined. They _certainly_ understand informed
consent, and its lack, and the ethical hell that they wallowed in. _Fuck_ you.

This is part and parcel with Facebook's long, slimy lurch through episode
after episode of privacy violation and subsequent sociopathic denial.

So now, the web's social networks are into psychological experiments on its
users. Er, products. Er, subjects. What's next? The internet of things is
coming, there are many rich troughs of slop to inhale involving physical
manipulation. Let's see what happens when thermostats make things just
slightly too hot, or too cold. Let's subtly vibrate their phones, to keep them
on edge, and correlate that with angry posts, or interesting purchases.

Let's see if we can get people to fight. Why? Who cares, it'll be fun, and we
declare afterwards what we were trying to do when we see what people do.

When it's all about the billions, anything is possible.

