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Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#151

Post by TomSwirly »

slver wrote: post #137
thatcat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe it's unethical in academic context, but in public service context, you have an existing service, and you're in charge of improving it. When you have an improved algorithm, would you change your algorithm all at once for everybody, or would you test your change on small % of users, before you go full-scale? You'd do the latter. There's no better option. Because if you're wrong, your impact is much more devastati…

> in public service context

This is not a "public service" - it's a for-profit company.

> When you have an improved algorithm,

This is not an "improved algorithm". They deliberately removed almost all positive news from some people's feeds for a week.

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#152

Post by slver »

TomSwirly wrote: post #151
slver wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's unethical in academic context, but in public service context, you have an existing service, and you're in charge of improving it. When you have an improved algorithm, would you change your algorithm all at once for everybody, or would you test your change on small % of users, before you go full-scale? You'd do the latter. There's no better option. Because if you're wrong, your impact is much more devastati…

> in public service context This is not a "public service" - it's a for-profit company. > When you have an improved algorithm, This is not an "improved algorithm". They deliberately removed almost all positive news from some people's feeds for a week.

I meant public service as in it's a service, and it's providing itself to the public. Not as in government service.

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#154

Post by emodendroket »

tobr wrote: post #153
emodendroket wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Then what you’re saying doesn’t make sense.

Why?

Because films’ promotions may deliberately conceal information about tragic events in the story to achieve maximum impact and nobody thinks that is unethical.

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#155

Post by tobr »

emodendroket wrote: post #154
tobr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because films’ promotions may deliberately conceal information about tragic events in the story to achieve maximum impact and nobody thinks that is unethical.

This feels a lot like talking to Eliza. Your replies very vaguely connect to what’s being discussed in this thread, but there’s just no substance or coherency to the argument.

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#156

Post by emodendroket »

tobr wrote: post #155
emodendroket wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because films’ promotions may deliberately conceal information about tragic events in the story to achieve maximum impact and nobody thinks that is unethical.

This feels a lot like talking to Eliza. Your replies very vaguely connect to what’s being discussed in this thread, but there’s just no substance or coherency to the argument.

"When a film makes you sad you are aware of what's going on" is your claim, but I don't see how that applies to something like, say, Terminator 2, whose entire goal, according to Cameron, was "making the audience cry for the Terminator," yet was not promoted as a sad film. It's hard to come up with a principled difference here.

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#157

Post by hackinthebochs »

xg15 wrote: post #145
hackinthebochs wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "emotional manipulation" may already be happening by using the website. If the user gave consent to that, I don't see what difference the act of gathering scientific data makes. Your argument seems to be against the current bar of consent that facebook and similar sites are required to get.

The user never consented to "emotional manipulation". If anything, the user consented to usage of an algorithmic newsfeed that ranks posts based on unknown criteria, but always with "relevance" as the overall goal. There is nothing about emotional manipulation in this. Emotional manipulation is also clearly not in the user's self interest, so there is no reason why they ever should give consent. (As opposed to an AI…

Emotional manipulation was scare quoted for a reason. Consent to "rank posts based on unknown criteria to maximize relevance" will incidentally, at least on some occasions, cause "emotional manipulation" in the consumers of the feed. So again, consent is already provided for the possibility of emotional manipulation. What's the difference between accidental and scientifically valid emotional manipulation such that extra consent is needed?

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#158

Post by xg15 »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #157
xg15 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user never consented to "emotional manipulation". If anything, the user consented to usage of an algorithmic newsfeed that ranks posts based on unknown criteria, but always with "relevance" as the overall goal. There is nothing about emotional manipulation in this. Emotional manipulation is also clearly not in the user's self interest, so there is no reason why they ever should give consent. (As opposed to an AI…

Emotional manipulation was scare quoted for a reason. Consent to "rank posts based on unknown criteria to maximize relevance" will incidentally, at least on some occasions, cause "emotional manipulation" in the consumers of the feed. So again, consent is already provided for the possibility of emotional manipulation. What's the difference between accidental and scientifically valid emotional manipulation such that ex…

> Consent to "rank posts based on unknown criteria to maximize relevance" will incidentally, at least on some occasions, cause "emotional manipulation" in the consumers of the feed.

Why is that automatically the case and how would the user know that?

> So again, consent is already provided for the possibility of emotional manipulation.

Giving consent for one specific form of emotional manipulation does not give blanket consent to all forms - especially not to deliberate acts.

Using the same logic, a surgeon could argue:

This patient asks me to fix his broken leg. To do this, I have to operate on him and create an incision. An incision is an instance of causing bodily harm. Therefore, the patient has given consent for me to cause him bodily harm. Therefore, I now have consent to punch the patient's face and steal his kidneys.

See the problem?

> What's the difference between accidental and scientifically valid emotional manipulation such that extra consent is needed?

One is accidental, the other is deliberate.

Also, that's not just my opinion. Just read the other guardian article linked from this one and the statements linked there:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-...

http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanto...

http://www.maxmasnick.com/2014/06/28/facebook/

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#159

Post by wruza »

xg15 wrote: post #143
wruza wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it’s not their addiction and not their problem. Everyone tries to push/trick/force you into it, from drug cartels to facebook. You can’t do much with neither of them for a variety of reasons, thus it sounds reasonable to perceive it as something that you should refrain from by yourself. And you can do that even without Quitting Facebook, just bookmark an url that has no feed in it. Personally I’m not using fa…

> FAANG exists as a multi-trillion industry only because pere inert content junkies with a thumb. Yes, but that's basic biology, not anything that has to do with strength of character or freedom of choice. "People" are also into heroine. Should we allow to build a multi-trillion dollar industry on that?

My first impulse was it’s not the same effect, but thinking of it some more I see what you mean. The main problem with it is convincing everyone that fb actually sells a drug and not entertainment/news.

Otoh, if you find out that you’re selling drugs in your cookie shop, should you stop? Because even non-targeting news sites do exactly that in this analogy. They post articles that “everyone” wants to see. Where is a borderline between “free coffee to breakfast” and “heroin store black friday”?

Re: Facebook deliberately made people sad. This ought to be the final straw (2012)

#160

Post by tobr »

emodendroket wrote: post #156
tobr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels a lot like talking to Eliza. Your replies very vaguely connect to what’s being discussed in this thread, but there’s just no substance or coherency to the argument.

"When a film makes you sad you are aware of what's going on" is your claim, but I don't see how that applies to something like, say, Terminator 2, whose entire goal, according to Cameron, was "making the audience cry for the Terminator," yet was not promoted as a sad film. It's hard to come up with a principled difference here.

The Terminator 2 audience knows the film is an authored fictional story. It can make someone cry when they didn’t expect it, but they understand that the filmmakers are intentionally trying to provoke certain emotions. If you can’t see the myriad principled differences between that situation, and logging onto Facebook expecting to see an unfiltered selection of posts, I really can’t believe you are trying hard.
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