Okay, not quite secret experiments because they kinda published a paper.
http://www.avclub.com/article/facebook-tinkered-users-feeds-massive-psychology-e-206324
QuoteScientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks," was published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users' news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users. Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network. Result: They can!
That's some second rate manipulation right there. Get back to me when they start re-wording your updates, just after you post them, in front of your face. Let me know if you're still all rockin' those spoilers, then... :horrormirth:
Huh. I guess fuck informed consent, right?
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 28, 2014, 01:53:55 PM
Huh. I guess fuck informed consent, right?
Informed consent is for LOSER NERDS who rely on grant money to do their science.
Quote from: Cainad (dec.) on June 28, 2014, 02:27:09 PM
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 28, 2014, 01:53:55 PM
Huh. I guess fuck informed consent, right?
Informed consent is for LOSER NERDS who rely on grant money to do their science.
How do you expect us to obtain accurate results without double-blind conditions?
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 28, 2014, 01:53:55 PM
Huh. I guess fuck informed consent, right?
YOU GAVE INFORMED CONSENT WHEN YOU CLICKED "AGREE TO TERMS" NEENER NEENER INCLUDED YOU IN MY STUDY ON A TECHNICALITY - Facebook
Thanks for undermining real social scientists, Facebook. Good job setting popular trust in researchers back 55 years. Awesome.
And all this for something that should be apparent without experiments. Of course if you show someone a bunch of negative things they'll respond in a negative manner.
Also "Facebook Scientists"? Is that a thing now?
Quote from: Raz Tech on June 29, 2014, 04:41:23 AM
And all this for something that should be apparent without experiments. Of course if you show someone a bunch of negative things they'll respond in a negative manner.
Also "Facebook Scientists"? Is that a thing now?
Yeah, it's kind of to real scientists as "Facebook Friends" are to real friends.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 29, 2014, 04:46:04 AM
Quote from: Raz Tech on June 29, 2014, 04:41:23 AM
And all this for something that should be apparent without experiments. Of course if you show someone a bunch of negative things they'll respond in a negative manner.
Also "Facebook Scientists"? Is that a thing now?
Yeah, it's kind of to real scientists as "Facebook Friends" are to real friends.
Putting PhD in "Facebook Science" on my next resume.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 28, 2014, 01:53:55 PM
Huh. I guess fuck informed consent, right?
Well, I hate Zuckerberg, so mission accomplished. :lulz:
yep. we all gave informed consent in the user agreement.
The paper is interesting - it's part of a body of research called Affect Control. There's been tons of research on this stuff, but facebook allowed scientists to study these effects in real-time.
I'm really curious about a few things
--They didn't look at frequency of use... I'm curious how strongly this effect is correlated with frequent facebook usage. If there's a strong correlation, you could minimize the emotional impact of facebook by limiting or maybe staggering your usage.
--To be clear, the study doesn't measure the actual emotional impact of seeing all these positive or negative updates--it quantifies emotion via word analysis of status updates. So its only measure of how happy/sad you are is the content of your status updates.
So it's possible that people in a social network surrounded by positive posts follow suit and post other positive status updates--but aren't significantly affected outside of that moment when they're staring at facebook.
I'd be curious to see a follow-up where they measure participant's emotions at various points during the day, using some other measuring tool.
Quote from: Cramulus on June 29, 2014, 01:37:30 PM
yep. we all gave informed consent in the user agreement.
Not in a sense any Institutional Review Board would recognize or accept as ethical. And very clearly not in any way the NIH would consider ethical. Obviously, Facebook isn't held to NIH standards, but still, performing mood manipulation experiments on a population that could not by any reasonable expectation be considered properly informed or to have given actual consent is shitty and unethical.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/06/facebook_unethical_experiment_it_made_news_feeds_happier_or_sadder_to_manipulate.html
QuoteFacebook's methodology raises serious ethical questions. The team may have bent research standards too far, possibly overstepping criteria enshrined in federal law and human rights declarations. "If you are exposing people to something that causes changes in psychological status, that's experimentation," says James Grimmelmann, a professor of technology and the law at the University of Maryland. "This is the kind of thing that would require informed consent."
Ah, informed consent. Here is the only mention of "informed consent" in the paper: The research "was consistent with Facebook's Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research."
That is not how most social scientists define informed consent.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-California/2014/06/29/Facebook-Experimented-on-Users-Without-Their-Knowledge
QuoteCriticism of the study is based on the fact that the users were unaware they were being studied and had not given their consent. In studies conducted by universities and other institutions which receive federal funding, the process entails answering to institutional review boards (IRBs), which in turn derive their judgments from ethical standards set such as the Common Rule. One of the pillars of the Common Rule is that subjects must consent to be included in an experiment.
QuoteJamie Guillory would not elaborate to The Atlantic on the subject, instead asserting that Facebook preferred to deal with the matter. A Facebook spokesman did respond to The Atlantic's inquiries by stating, "We carefully consider what research we do and have a strong internal review process. There is no unnecessary collection of people's data in connection with these research initiatives, and all data is stored securely."
Fiske agreed, citing the fact that unlike universities and federal agencies, Facebook is not financially supported by the federal government. She said:
A lot of the regulation of research ethics hinges on government supported research, and of course Facebook's research is not government supported, so they're not obligated by any laws or regulations to abide by the standards. But I have to say that many universities and research institutions and even for-profit companies use the Common Rule as a guideline anyway. It's voluntary. You could imagine if you were a drug company, you'd want to be able to say you'd done the research ethically because the backlash would be just huge otherwise.
Upshot: "We're a corporation, we do whatever we want. You agreed when you created your account that your data could be used in research, therefore you agreed to active and deliberate manipulation of your emotional state".
Yeah, Facebook, once again, thanks for shitting in the pool of science.
QuoteFacebook is not financially supported by the federal government
Uh-huh (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid). Sure (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534).
Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 10:05:06 AM
QuoteFacebook is not financially supported by the federal government
Uh-huh (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid). Sure (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534).
Oh, snap.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/even-the-editor-of-facebooks-mood-study-thought-it-was-creepy/373649/
QuoteEven Susan Fiske, the professor of psychology at Princeton University who edited the study for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of America, had doubts when the research first crossed her desk.
"I was concerned," she told me in a phone interview, "until I queried the authors and they said their local institutional review board had approved it—and apparently on the grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people's News Feeds all the time... I understand why people have concerns. I think their beef is with Facebook, really, not the research."
But, as The Atlantic, in a rare act of investigative journalism, points out:
QuoteBut there seems to be a question of whether Facebook actually went through an IRB. In a Facebook post on Sunday, study author Adam Kramer referenced "internal review practices." A Forbes report, citing an unnamed source, said that Facebook only used an internal review. When I asked Fiske to clarify, she told me the researchers' "revision letter said they had Cornell IRB approval as a 'pre-existing dataset' presumably from FB, who seems to have reviewed it as well in some unspecified way... Under IRB regulations, pre-existing dataset would have been approved previously and someone is just analyzing data already collected, often by someone else."
Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 10:05:06 AM
QuoteFacebook is not financially supported by the federal government
Uh-huh (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid). Sure (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534).
Well doesn't THAT look messy for Facebook?
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 30, 2014, 04:57:31 PM
Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 10:05:06 AM
QuoteFacebook is not financially supported by the federal government
Uh-huh (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid). Sure (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534).
Well doesn't THAT look messy for Facebook?
Well, after that fiasco of a stock market opening, I suppose Facebook oughta be thankful that SOMEONE is at least willing to give them money.
Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 05:05:04 PM
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 30, 2014, 04:57:31 PM
Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 10:05:06 AM
QuoteFacebook is not financially supported by the federal government
Uh-huh (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid). Sure (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534).
Well doesn't THAT look messy for Facebook?
Well, after that fiasco of a stock market opening, I suppose Facebook oughta be thankful that SOMEONE is at least willing to give them money.
You'd think they would have considered maybe talking to someone who had taken a class in research ethics or maybe read a book. I mean, there are a few books out there, given that research ethics is currently, oh I don't know, THE HOTTEST TOPIC IN THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY right now and you can't go anywhere without running into a speaker on the topic. Fairly obviously, the "scientists" at Facebook have no formal training. What a fuckup.
If only there was some way for these scientists at Facebook to communicate with their peers.
Oh.
Quote from: Junkenstein on June 30, 2014, 06:47:13 PM
If only there was some way for these scientists at Facebook to communicate with their peers.
Oh.
:lulz:
If motherfucking Myspace had a chat application instead of just inbox or wall, this would had never happened.
A plague on both your houses.
Quote from: The Johnny on July 01, 2014, 12:49:38 AM
If motherfucking Myspace had a chat application instead of just inbox or wall, this would had never happened.
A plague on both your houses.
I'd consider going back to Myspace. Hell, I'd go back to Friendster as long as they didn't replicate their "no fake account" tyranny.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 29, 2014, 08:52:03 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on June 29, 2014, 01:37:30 PM
yep. we all gave informed consent in the user agreement.
Not in a sense any Institutional Review Board would recognize or accept as ethical. And very clearly not in any way the NIH would consider ethical. Obviously, Facebook isn't held to NIH standards, but still, performing mood manipulation experiments on a population that could not by any reasonable expectation be considered properly informed or to have given actual consent is shitty and unethical.
Well, it was a peer reviewed study, published in pnas (http://www.pnas.org). So their IRB does apparently think that the legally binding TOS agreement qualifies as informed consent. 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.
Only one of the three authors is a facebook researcher. Doing some research on the other names --- one is (this is weird) a researcher for a tobacco watchdog group (? (http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/)), the other is a professor at Ithica, with a pretty extensive body of research (http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fU4Y4fEAAAAJ&hl=en) on affect control theory. Looks like he's been focused on researching the link between exposure to digital social networks and self-esteem since at least 2011.
I am still somewhat alarmed by the research, but I gotta wonder, if we didn't feel like facebook was conducting it in secret, would it still be alarming? Maybe it's good that we're discovering these links. The relationship between online social networks and your emotional state is probably a healthy topic to examine. At least THIS research is being done in public, in a peer reviewed journal, rather than some secret MK-ULTRA style lab. Looking at the abstract of Hancock's other work - it's interesting stuff. I don't think I have a problem with his other work, it was the initial attention grabbing headline of "FACEBOOK IS DOING MIND CONTROL RESEARCH" that put me on guard.
Quote from: Cain on June 30, 2014, 04:33:56 PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/even-the-editor-of-facebooks-mood-study-thought-it-was-creepy/373649/
QuoteEven Susan Fiske, the professor of psychology at Princeton University who edited the study for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of America, had doubts when the research first crossed her desk.
"I was concerned," she told me in a phone interview, "until I queried the authors and they said their local institutional review board had approved it—and apparently on the grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people's News Feeds all the time... I understand why people have concerns. I think their beef is with Facebook, really, not the research."
But, as The Atlantic, in a rare act of investigative journalism, points out:
QuoteBut there seems to be a question of whether Facebook actually went through an IRB. In a Facebook post on Sunday, study author Adam Kramer referenced "internal review practices." A Forbes report, citing an unnamed source, said that Facebook only used an internal review. When I asked Fiske to clarify, she told me the researchers' "revision letter said they had Cornell IRB approval as a 'pre-existing dataset' presumably from FB, who seems to have reviewed it as well in some unspecified way... Under IRB regulations, pre-existing dataset would have been approved previously and someone is just analyzing data already collected, often by someone else."
oh snapple apple!
well shit yeah, if their IRB gave them permission to use a pre-existing data set, that certainly doesn't account for tinkering with the news feed and then collecting new data.
So if facebook is calling this a gray area because they tinker with news feeds all the time (and therefore this doesn't count as a manipulation, but business-as-usual) then I'd want to hear a finer explanation of why and how they filter users' news feed and how this research is different from their day to day practice.
(http://www.dorktower.com/files/2014/06/DorkTower1218.gif)
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
QuoteWho 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.
Quote from: Cramulus on July 01, 2014, 02:21:22 PM
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on June 29, 2014, 08:52:03 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on June 29, 2014, 01:37:30 PM
yep. we all gave informed consent in the user agreement.
Not in a sense any Institutional Review Board would recognize or accept as ethical. And very clearly not in any way the NIH would consider ethical. Obviously, Facebook isn't held to NIH standards, but still, performing mood manipulation experiments on a population that could not by any reasonable expectation be considered properly informed or to have given actual consent is shitty and unethical.
Well, it was a peer reviewed study, published in pnas (http://www.pnas.org). So their IRB does apparently think that the legally binding TOS agreement qualifies as informed consent. 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.
Only one of the three authors is a facebook researcher. Doing some research on the other names --- one is (this is weird) a researcher for a tobacco watchdog group (? (http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/)), the other is a professor at Ithica, with a pretty extensive body of research (http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fU4Y4fEAAAAJ&hl=en) on affect control theory. Looks like he's been focused on researching the link between exposure to digital social networks and self-esteem since at least 2011.
I am still somewhat alarmed by the research, but I gotta wonder, if we didn't feel like facebook was conducting it in secret, would it still be alarming? Maybe it's good that we're discovering these links. The relationship between online social networks and your emotional state is probably a healthy topic to examine. At least THIS research is being done in public, in a peer reviewed journal, rather than some secret MK-ULTRA style lab. Looking at the abstract of Hancock's other work - it's interesting stuff. I don't think I have a problem with his other work, it was the initial attention grabbing headline of "FACEBOOK IS DOING MIND CONTROL RESEARCH" that put me on guard.
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.
Also, when it comes to experimentation, just fucking no. Nobody trained in biomedical or social research thinks that an online TOS agreement qualifies as "Informed Consent", which is held to a COMPLETELY different standard than software TOS.
It's adorable that you think I don't know what I'm talking about, though.
Quote from: Cramulus on July 01, 2014, 03:29:36 PM
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
QuoteWho 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.
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.
Quote from: Cramulus on July 01, 2014, 03:13:52 PM
(http://www.dorktower.com/files/2014/06/DorkTower1218.gif)
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
Quote from: Cramulus on July 01, 2014, 02:21:22 PM
...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.
Quote from: The Johnny on July 02, 2014, 04:31:09 AM
Quote from: Cramulus on July 01, 2014, 02:21:22 PM
...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.
Yeah, the corruption wouldn't be in the ruling, it would be in the consequences.
Which would likely be a slap on the wrist.
Quote from: Cain on July 02, 2014, 11:46:40 AM
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.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 02, 2014, 02:13:29 AM
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 (http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/30/cornell-university-we-didnt-review-facebooks-mood-manipulation-experiment/). It's also worth noting - the issue isn't clear, & some academics disagree (http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/06/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experimentand-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing.html) about how much approval and oversight was actually needed here.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 02, 2014, 02:16:50 AM
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.
Quote from: Cain on July 02, 2014, 11:46:40 AM
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.
Quote from: Cramulus on July 02, 2014, 01:31:35 PM
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 02, 2014, 02:13:29 AM
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 (http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/30/cornell-university-we-didnt-review-facebooks-mood-manipulation-experiment/). It's also worth noting - the issue isn't clear, & some academics disagree (http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/06/how-an-irb-could-have-legitimately-approved-the-facebook-experimentand-why-that-may-be-a-good-thing.html) about how much approval and oversight was actually needed here.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 02, 2014, 02:16:50 AM
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.
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.
eh you know, this is more frustrating than it's worth
sorry if I caused any of it, it was honestly not my intent
The fact is that it's there, and manipulating the tone of news feeds is the least of it.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 02, 2014, 04:00:37 PM
Quote from: Cain on July 02, 2014, 11:46:40 AM
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.
It's great, you can shut-down the account and dl an archive of your profile. Done, takes less than 2min.
XKCD has quite a good response to this:
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_ethics.png)
This shit is no different from how they used to treat their cattle users.
I'm going to boycot FB as soon as i can bring myself to go back on it and unruffle the feathers i ruffled the last time i was there.
Quote from: Regret on July 05, 2014, 11:58:42 PM
XKCD has quite a good response to this:
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_ethics.png)
This shit is no different from how they used to treat their cattle users.
I'm going to boycot FB as soon as i can bring myself to go back on it and unruffle the feathers i ruffled the last time i was there.
It's a response that pretty much completely fails to take into consideration the history of unethical science experiments and the reasons most serious researchers, and the agencies that fund them, are so paranoid about even the appearance of unethical research now. It's well-understood that corporations engage in all kinds of unethical behavior in the name of profits, and America is mostly OK with that because CAPITALISM; it's also well-understood that because academic researchers crossed all kinds of lines and perpetrated some really unspeakable, unbelievable horrors on an unsuspecting public in the past, it is critical that we try to distance ourselves from that now and maintain an unimpeachable standard with research subjects.
The merger of CAPITALISM and research is really, really ugly and scary. Look up what pharmaceutical companies do in impoverished countries because it would be illegal for them to do it here, for shits and giggles.
In university, there were collegues that subjected themselves to pharma experiments for 90 dollars a month... im not sure thats legal in the USA.
Quote from: The Johnny on July 06, 2014, 03:29:44 AM
In university, there were collegues that subjected themselves to pharma experiments for 90 dollars a month... im not sure thats legal in the USA.
I have known people who farmed themselves out as experimental research test subjects in the US, but I know the laws vary considerably from country to country, and that there are many countries that have very lax standards compared to the US, which may not be too different from Mexico because I know Mexico is not one of the most popular countries for outsourcing experiments to.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 06, 2014, 01:27:14 AM
Quote from: Regret on July 05, 2014, 11:58:42 PM
XKCD has quite a good response to this:
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_ethics.png)
This shit is no different from how they used to treat their cattle users.
I'm going to boycot FB as soon as i can bring myself to go back on it and unruffle the feathers i ruffled the last time i was there.
It's a response that pretty much completely fails to take into consideration the history of unethical science experiments and the reasons most serious researchers, and the agencies that fund them, are so paranoid about even the appearance of unethical research now. It's well-understood that corporations engage in all kinds of unethical behavior in the name of profits, and America is mostly OK with that because CAPITALISM; it's also well-understood that because academic researchers crossed all kinds of lines and perpetrated some really unspeakable, unbelievable horrors on an unsuspecting public in the past, it is critical that we try to distance ourselves from that now and maintain an unimpeachable standard with research subjects.
The merger of CAPITALISM and research is really, really ugly and scary. Look up what pharmaceutical companies do in impoverished countries because it would be illegal for them to do it here, for shits and giggles.
Agreed, I posted this pic because I have the impression that people are forgetting that Facebook was evil before this.
Also, leave it to facebook to do MAD science wrong.
Quote from: Regret on July 06, 2014, 01:51:44 PM
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on July 06, 2014, 01:27:14 AM
Quote from: Regret on July 05, 2014, 11:58:42 PM
XKCD has quite a good response to this:
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_ethics.png)
This shit is no different from how they used to treat their cattle users.
I'm going to boycot FB as soon as i can bring myself to go back on it and unruffle the feathers i ruffled the last time i was there.
It's a response that pretty much completely fails to take into consideration the history of unethical science experiments and the reasons most serious researchers, and the agencies that fund them, are so paranoid about even the appearance of unethical research now. It's well-understood that corporations engage in all kinds of unethical behavior in the name of profits, and America is mostly OK with that because CAPITALISM; it's also well-understood that because academic researchers crossed all kinds of lines and perpetrated some really unspeakable, unbelievable horrors on an unsuspecting public in the past, it is critical that we try to distance ourselves from that now and maintain an unimpeachable standard with research subjects.
The merger of CAPITALISM and research is really, really ugly and scary. Look up what pharmaceutical companies do in impoverished countries because it would be illegal for them to do it here, for shits and giggles.
Agreed, I posted this pic because I have the impression that people are forgetting that Facebook was evil before this.
Also, leave it to facebook to do MAD science wrong.
I didn't read that comic as dismissing the issue but addressing the fact that it was previously taken for granted. I think Nigel's reply, however, needs to be thrown on a giant billboard on the moon. Course, then they'd probably launch a nuke at it...oh, lol, that would never happen. America would never launch a nuke at the moon...