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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The parent is talking about subject consent, not board approval. These are two vastly different things.
>There are reasons why research goes under ethical review before it is conducted Did you miss that line?
Do you understand the word 'consent'?
When addressing criticism, it's not great to start "Ok so." (Or "Calm Down. Breathe. We Hear You" [1], to dig farther back in time.) [1] http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/calm-down-breathe-we-...
Do you have any thoughts about the explanation itself? I made it past the first two words, and thought the explanation was fairly reasonable and satisfying.
"While we’ve always considered what research we do carefully, we (not just me, several other researchers at Facebook) have been working on improving our internal review practices. The experiment in question was run in early 2012, and we have come a long way since then."
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?
In general, A/B testing is studying the website. You're not testing us, you're testing the best ways to convince us to do stuff. On top of that, when users visit your website (which is presumably pitching something to them), they know they're being pitched. They know the website is going to try to convince them to do stuff--click over here, watch this video, sign up for foogadgetmcawesome. Same drill with advertising. Yeah, this commercial with the freaking Budweiser puppy made me cr--er, chop onions--in its attempt to get me to buy beer, but I know they're trying to sell me beer, and I knew as soon as the puppy hit the screen that I'd probably start sniffling.
- Optimizing ad targeting
- Maximizing click-thru
- Maximizing engagement
- Minimizing abandonment/bounce rates
Getting outraged about any of this seems akin to getting pissed that the new season of your favorite TV show sucked...
Edited for formatting...
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?
People calling this unethical have to explain why it is but A/B testing is not.
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…
It seems to be that Facebook did something like an A/B test of their ranking algorithm, and then did a cohort study to see if there were any longer term impact. If what they did requires informed consent, what about when the end goal is maximizing click through rate, e.g. by inciting an emotional response? Let's say FB finds that certain types of posts in the feed cause a nearby ad to be clicked on more. They determi…
People calling this unethical have to explain why it is but A/B testing is not.
This particular experiment is getting scrutiny because they published the results in a journal and it is a rather egregious example (the hypothesis, and test methodology, both demonstrate a particular brand of recklessness you don't tend to see in website A/B testing.)
EDIT: For reference, I know a lot about this subject because I worked extensively at IMVU, one of the first consumer-facing websites to aggressively A/B test almost everything. I don't have a luddite perspective on this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The goal of this study was not to improve the site, though: it was to test a hypothesis about social psychology.