111–120 of 162 posts
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Social media algorithms are designed to show you things which make you upset because that type of content is highly likely to "engage."
It's not just algorithms, MSM do this too. 'Fear sells'
Product Person #1: Hey, here’s a writeup that says if we show too many positive posts to people that it creates bad feelings. Should we show less positive posts? Product Person #2: Not sure, wouldn’t negative posts make people feel worse? Product Person #1: Wow, I donno, maybe we should try adjusting additional posts people see one way a bit and see what happens? Product Person #2: Not a bad idea, how about we try bo…
The constant derision of journalists in tech circles (especially on HN) is kind of shocking to see. Did you read the article or did you miss that the journalist is relaying fellow researchers' apprehensiveness about Facebook being allowed to conduct an unethical study. This article [1] is linked in the second paragraph. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-...
And "the journalist is relaying" is a poor excuse - the journalist has a choice of what to relay and how to frame it, and this choice is routinely used to frame things in a specific way. There's no "just reporting" anymore, if there ever was. There's always a reason why something is reported (or not reported, as it happens) and there's always a reason why something is reported in a specific way. The choice and control is always on the press's side.
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That's the definition of an unethical experiment design and would be considered academic misconduct if that were academic work. Regardless of intent, fb probably shouldn't be allowing front end devs to design psychological experiments at mass scale. https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Experimental_ethics
Which part of this conception of experimental ethics does this violate? Facebook's experiment did not directly cause the emotions, the posted content for that. Even if it did, this sort of thing is well within the bounds of normal experimentation with large systems. This is similar to claiming that traffic experiments which change the flow of cars, in term causing some people to experience more traffic and become unh…
Protection of clinical trial subjects
Clinical trials on minors
Clinical trials on incapacitated adults not able to give informed legal
Establishment of mandatory Ethics Committees
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Yes, that would be deeply unethical. And to make matters worse, I believe that’s a fairly accurate description of how Facebook works.
So how could someone ethically run social media of any stripe?
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Excuse me, but this is the HN bi-hourly "Facebook is evil" post (tm). Questioning the content is against the rules.
There’s no need for this.
I noticed during the election that whenever I glanced at the fb "watch" video section, it was videos of guys getting into fist fights, or videos containing disturbing violence. I don't ever watch or search for videos like this, so it's not like it was selected based on my watch history or something. At the time, I figured it was a psychological trick to suck me into viewing more ads since violence has that "can't loo…
Facebook would make all its users happy and positive if that were possible to do. Nobody at Facebook is trying to manipulate you, except by trying to show you content that keeps you coming back to Facebook.
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To be fair, the article states that the study was designed by a data scientist. Not that that implies that any additional ethical considerations were taken into account.
Data scientist means someone who's had classes in stats and knows how to use software to analyze data. They don't cover how to run experiment and don't cover ethics
That said, anyone who signs up for a job at Facebook doesn't give a shit about ethical design of experiments.
This was the last straw for me, thats when I permabanned facebook from my life. This was an unauthorized, unguided, unethical, mass psychological experiment on human beings. Anyone involved should have gone to jail for crimes against humanity.
Is that something engineers and data scientists should be imprisoned over? I think most US politicians cause bigger effects every time they tweet.
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No it's not a crime against humanity, let's not go that far and let's not unreasonably promote cancel culture by burning the witch at the stake before giving the issue some deep thought. It's a much more complicated issue then you describe. Many corporate organizations have been selectively distributing information to deliberately influence sentiment for decades. Facebook is not the first nor will they be the last. R…
Ok, so clandestine manipulation is freedom of speech. Is that what the founding fathers intended?
Like I said, not so clear cut. It's a complex world we live in. But I get why someone would vote me down. It's easier to see everything in terms of black and white. The truth, however, is grey.
Take freedom of religion for example. Freedom of religion allows cults like Scientology to form. If we allow the government to have the power to eliminate Scientology what kind of power does it give the government over Christianity or Buddhism?
Personally my view is that the cost is worth the benefit, because the alternative is much worse.
Facebook didn't make people sad. It made a population post things with slightly more negative words, only significant when measured across hundreds of thousands of users.