Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#21

Post by gammarator » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:54 AM UTC

elpool2 wrote: post #9

gemma wrote: post #5

I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my coauthors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused. In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety. Ignoring the classic "I'm sorry you were freaked out" non-apology here, this response completely misses the point, and tries to re-frame the concept of informed…

Is it an ethical breach if I don't get informed consent from users when I do A/B testing on my website? Or is it only unethical if I publish the results afterwards? Or is it only if I'm actually trying to affect the user's mood specifically?

A/B tests are different, though: in aggregate, they should make your website better for me, the user. Here the user is just fodder for an academic's fairly trivial journal article (my friends' feelings affect my feelings!).

Who decides what experiments social scientists get to run on 1/7th of the world's population?

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#22

Post by brainsareneat » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:54 AM UTC

I wonder where the line is between A/B testing and 'psychological experimentation' and when it's been crossed. Was it crossed just because it was published in PNAS? The outraged don't seem to think so.

What if I'm Amazon or Yelp, and I want to choose review snippets? Is looking for emotionally charged ones and testing to see how that impacts users wrong?

What if it's more direct psychological manipulation? What if I run a productivity app, and I want to see how giving people encouraging tips, like 'Try starting the day by doing one thing really well.' impacts their item completion rate. I'm doing psychological experimentation. I'm not getting my users' permission. But I am helping them. And it's a valid question - maybe these helpful tips actually end up hurting users. I should test this behavior, not just implement it wholesale.

It seems like Facebook had a valid question, and they didn't know what the answer was. Did they go wrong when they published it in PNAS? Or was it wrong to implement the algorithm in the first place? I don't think it was.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#23

Post by akerl_ » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:55 AM UTC

Based on the other comments, it appears that the difference between kosher A/B testing and unethical experimentation with dire mental health consequences is either "Did you publish a paper when you were done" or "Are you a big, noteworthy company".

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#24

Post by yazinsai » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:56 AM UTC

napsterbr wrote: post #19

onewaystreet wrote: post #14

People calling this unethical have to explain why it is but A/B testing is not.

A/B testing is for commercial purposes, it's wildly different when you are testing the user's psychological state.

+1. It's all about the end goal.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#25

Post by gouggoug » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:56 AM UTC

For those like me who lived under a rock, here's the study: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/05/29/1320040111

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#26

Post by potatolicious » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

I'm going to try and avoid the minefield that is this research vs. ethics.

One thought I've had is that the blowback against this incident is less about the research itself and how ethical it is, and more about perception of Facebook in general. My suspicion is a lot of the opposition at this point comes from long-simmering distrust of Facebook and the increasingly negative perception of its brand - this incident is merely the straw that broke the camel's back, for some.

And if the popular response to this revelation reflects people's general views on Facebook, it's not good for the company.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#27

Post by r0h1n » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

Wow, what an amazingly tone-deaf post. It demeans Facebook users who were offended at the company's actions into simpletons who did not really understand what the study was really about. Sample this:

> Nobody's posts were "hidden," they just didn't show up on some loads of Feed.

How is hiding any different from not showing up?

> And at the end of the day, the actual impact on people in the experiment was the minimal amount to statistically detect it.

Not what your own study claimed.

> I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my coauthors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused.

We are not sorry about the research, but only for "the way the paper described it".

> In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.

In hindsight, our users are hyperventilating frogs. They should learn how to relax in the nice warm(ing) Facebook waters.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#28

Post by akerl_ » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:58 AM UTC

gammarator wrote: post #21

elpool2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it an ethical breach if I don't get informed consent from users when I do A/B testing on my website? Or is it only unethical if I publish the results afterwards? Or is it only if I'm actually trying to affect the user's mood specifically?

A/B tests are different, though: in aggregate, they should make your website better for me, the user. Here the user is just fodder for an academic's fairly trivial journal article (my friends' feelings affect my feelings!). Who decides what experiments social scientists get to run on 1/7th of the world's population?

They only make the site better for you if you're on the "winning" side. If A/B tests made the site better for everyone being tested, they'd not be very useful. Unless you mean "they should make your website better for me [after the test is done]", in which case they have the same goal as Facebook's study.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#29

Post by smokeyj » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:58 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #16

smokeyj wrote: post #13

> The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product. That.. or getting users to click more ads. Maybe ad inventory can be optimized for people in an certain emotional state, and the user's wall can be used to induce the most profitable state of mind for fb's available ad inventory. That would be awesome in an evil villain kind of way.

> That.. or getting users to click more ads. Or both, with no contradictions at all.

The omission of truth is more disingenuous than contradictory.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#30

Post by onewaystreet » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 5:59 AM UTC

napsterbr wrote: post #19

onewaystreet wrote: post #14

People calling this unethical have to explain why it is but A/B testing is not.

A/B testing is for commercial purposes, it's wildly different when you are testing the user's psychological state.

But a lot of A/B testing does test a user's psychological state. One could argue that doing it for commercial purposes makes it worse.