Facebook conducting SECRET EXPERIMENTS on users.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

btw, I haven't watched this yet, but here's a TED talk I found by one of the paper's authors:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hancock_3_types_of_digital_lies

Who hasn't sent a text message saying "I'm on my way" when it wasn't true or fudged the truth a touch in their online dating profile? But Jeff Hancock doesn't believe that the anonymity of the internet encourages dishonesty. In fact, he says the searchability and permanence of information online may even keep us honest.

it does sound like a kissing-cousin to Zuckerberg's opinions on privacy... that visibility leads to honesty, and living in the open is the new social norm.

Which is totally consistent with concealing from their customers that they were manipulating their newsfeeds in order to discover whether it would affect the emotional content of their posts, of course.

Oh wait... transparency is only for the little people. Right.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

There is so much irony in this popping up on the tail of all the news stories about how online bullying can tip depressives over the edge to suicide. Because clearly, being a jerk to people online is unethical, but a giant corporation secretly manipulating the newsfeeds of potentially emotionally fragile and/or socially isolated people to contain a relentless onslaught of negativity is A-OK. Righto.

So, what do you think the odds are that none of the unwitting "participants" in that study were depressed?

Seriously, the more I think about it the more pissed off I get.

[minuspace]

[The Johnny]

...I suspect it'd hold up in court -we know nobody reads those things, but they're still legal agreements. If somebody asks you to sign an informed-consent document, and you don't read it but sign it anyway, you've still given informed consent.

Yes, it will hold up in court because its the NSA, CIA and FBI's playground...

And Cram, I constantly work with informed consent paperwork... for every single thing you want to take video or audio or whatever, you have to specifically craft the IC format for it to explicitly say what it is for... you want to make a documentary? ICF... you want to release a paper? another ICF... you also want to release sound bits? yet another ICF.

So no, its just being uninformed to say that a TOS is informed consent.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

...I suspect it'd hold up in court -we know nobody reads those things, but they're still legal agreements. If somebody asks you to sign an informed-consent document, and you don't read it but sign it anyway, you've still given informed consent.

Yes, it will hold up in court because its the NSA, CIA and FBI's playground...

And Cram, I constantly work with informed consent paperwork... for every single thing you want to take video or audio or whatever, you have to specifically craft the IC format for it to explicitly say what it is for... you want to make a documentary? ICF... you want to release a paper? another ICF... you also want to release sound bits? yet another ICF.

So no, its just being uninformed to say that a TOS is informed consent.

I actually don't think it would hold up in court because of all the extensive precedent before it and because of the NIH standards... I am not sure the general corruption of US "information" agencies is strong enough to overcome that level of established precedent.

Other than that, yeah, I completely agree with you.

[Cain]

Yeah, the corruption wouldn't be in the ruling, it would be in the consequences.

Which would likely be a slap on the wrist.

[The Johnny]

Yeah, the corruption wouldn't be in the ruling, it would be in the consequences.

Which would likely be a slap on the wrist.

Same result, different means, yeah.

[Cramulus]

I don't think you read the articles Cain or I posted... whether there actually is a Facebook IRB is in doubt, and if there is, it profoundly fails to live up to the ethical standards set by the single largest health science research funding agency in the world.

Further, the questions being raised, and specifically the phrasing of my own objection, concerns whether the way they went about conducting the research is ethical (by current generally-accepted standards) and whether it has high potential to foster public distrust of social science research.

Being published does not endorse the ethics of the research, and it certainly does nothing to mitigate the damage done to the research community by irresponsible and unethical researchers. A major paper was published from the Tuskegee experiment.

absolutely -- I did read the articles, my impression was that the Cornell IRB approved the research based on info it received from Facebook's internal IRB. Facebook's IRB is of course dubious, but I figured Cornell was the relevant review board to gatekeep the PNAS journal 'cause they're a university. Well I guess that's not the case... seriously creepy. Cornell has been distancing itself from this. It's also worth noting - the issue isn't clear, & some academics disagree about how much approval and oversight was actually needed here.

It's adorable that you think I don't know what I'm talking about, though.

I'm not sure how this escalated to a personal level. If I pressed a button, I sincerely apologize; I'm genuinely trying to make sense of this rather complicated nest of information.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, the corruption wouldn't be in the ruling, it would be in the consequences.

Which would likely be a slap on the wrist.

I am kind of hoping, probably futilely, that the consequences will be bad press and public shaming for Facebook.

Maybe even shareholder divestment.

I'm an optimist.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't think you read the articles Cain or I posted... whether there actually is a Facebook IRB is in doubt, and if there is, it profoundly fails to live up to the ethical standards set by the single largest health science research funding agency in the world.

Further, the questions being raised, and specifically the phrasing of my own objection, concerns whether the way they went about conducting the research is ethical (by current generally-accepted standards) and whether it has high potential to foster public distrust of social science research.

Being published does not endorse the ethics of the research, and it certainly does nothing to mitigate the damage done to the research community by irresponsible and unethical researchers. A major paper was published from the Tuskegee experiment.

absolutely -- I did read the articles, my impression was that the Cornell IRB approved the research based on info it received from Facebook's internal IRB. Facebook's IRB is of course dubious, but I figured Cornell was the relevant review board to gatekeep the PNAS journal 'cause they're a university. Well I guess that's not the case... seriously creepy. Cornell has been distancing itself from this. It's also worth noting - the issue isn't clear, & some academics disagree about how much approval and oversight was actually needed here.

It's adorable that you think I don't know what I'm talking about, though.

I'm not sure how this escalated to a personal level. If I pressed a button, I sincerely apologize; I'm genuinely trying to make sense of this rather complicated nest of information.

How disingenuous of you.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Human beings are not guinea pigs, and it is reprehensible to treat them as such.

The only difference between this and the Tuskeegee experiments is scale.

[Cramulus]

eh you know, this is more frustrating than it's worth

sorry if I caused any of it, it was honestly not my intent

[minuspace]

The fact is that it's there, and manipulating the tone of news feeds is the least of it.

[Junkenstein]

Yeah, the corruption wouldn't be in the ruling, it would be in the consequences.

Which would likely be a slap on the wrist.

I am kind of hoping, probably futilely, that the consequences will be bad press and public shaming for Facebook.

Maybe even shareholder divestment.

I'm an optimist.

I was hoping for people to, you know, shut down their accounts and stop using it.

Instead, it seems that people have taken to the site in droves to complain to their friends about how terrible the site they are actively using is.

The term "Boycott" isn't used that often nowadays. Feels like it's time for it to make a comeback. In a big way. 

[minuspace]

It's great, you can shut-down the account and dl an archive of your profile.  Done, takes less than 2min.