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Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

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Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#41

Post by kevingadd »

onewaystreet wrote: post #30
napsterbr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

That's absolutely true. The main difference here is that the experiment's negative impact was unabstracted yet they still went ahead with the experiment. The hypothesis was more or less 'we can make people depressed', without the slightest hint of defensible motives or objectives ('we want to make our ads more effective', 'we want to find the best way to convince customers that they want our product'.)

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#43

Post by kevingadd »

brainsareneat wrote: post #22

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…

The main indications that a line was crossed are the combination of a blatantly questionable hypothesis ('we can make people depressed or unhappy') with an intentional lack of informed consent & a huge set of test subjects.

If you're doing medical testing in order to roll something out as a pharmaceutical for prescription use or over-the-counter sales, the tests are rolled out in stages, with initial testing being done on a very small number of patients under extreme scrutiny, and even that is only done after the medication has been vetted carefully using animal models. It's extremely important to avoid harming your test subjects.

In comparison, they basically went full-steam on this experiment on hundreds of thousands of people despite the fact that emotional manipulation of this sort is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. When I say extremely dangerous I mean potentially life-threatening.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#44

Post by onewaystreet »

jacquesm wrote: post #31
onewaystreet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are reasons why research goes under ethical review before it is conducted Did you miss that line?

> Did you miss that line? Do you understand the word 'consent'?

The line I quoted implies that the OP thinks that the research did not go under ethical review because if it had they would have required informed consent. But it did and they did not.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#45

Post by kevingadd »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #34

Am I alone in being completely un-surprised and accepting of Facebook doing research in this way on its users? The News Feed as an interface for using FB is and has always been an evolving product and in the control of FB. They've been constantly messing with it, A/B testing different combinations of user/advertiser content and post/comment structure. They do this to test outcomes, and achieve goals that most likely…

You're not alone, but I think you do yourself a disservice by underestimating the potential negative impact of an experiment designed for the purpose of manipulating a customer's emotions. There's no defensible business objective here, and furthermore, any business objective that relies on this kind of emotional manipulation is suspect.

Intentionally making a customer depressed is not something you fuck around with. It's incredibly dangerous, and doing it to a huge subset of your audience with no mechanisms to ensure you don't inflict real harm is utterly reckless and irresponsible.

The individual mechanisms and approach used here for the experiment are not, in and of themselves, objectionable. Many A/B tests are wholly defensible. The end goal and process are the problem here.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#46

Post by jacquesm »

onewaystreet wrote: post #44
jacquesm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you miss that line? Do you understand the word 'consent'?

The line I quoted implies that the OP thinks that the research did not go under ethical review because if it had they would have required informed consent. But it did and they did not.

Ethical review by facebook is not ethical review.

That's like asking a serial killer about his opinion of murder.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#47

Post by benastan »

gemma wrote: post #33
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?

If your A/B testing is intentionally inducing a negative mental state in your users without letting them know up front, I'd say that's probably an ethical breach. 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.…

I don't see the distinction. It's fine to market your product, but there is such a thing as distortion and as a scam. Providing a fair representation of your product factors into ethics, as does Facebook fairly presenting the feed of your friends news, with a reasonable attempt at NOT distorting it.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#48

Post by onewaystreet »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
onewaystreet wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line I quoted implies that the OP thinks that the research did not go under ethical review because if it had they would have required informed consent. But it did and they did not.

Ethical review by facebook is not ethical review. That's like asking a serial killer about his opinion of murder.

It was also reviewed by a Cornell IRB.

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#49

Post by zaroth »

r0h1n wrote: post #27

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…

I am really trying to understand both sides of this. Focusing on the actual research, what about it do you think requires informed consent?

Do you understand how widespread this kind of research is? Literally everyone does this.

The act of publishing can't be the ethical breach -- just focus on the research, what do you think they did wrong there?

Re: Facebook emotion manipulation study: an explanation

#50

Post by thisrod »

nness wrote: post #2

Not a single point in that response directly addresses why there was no informed consent in the study. There are reasons why research goes under ethical review before it is conducted, and this is certainly going to be a tough lesson for Facebook.

Experimenters have tell fibs in order to discover the truth about your behavior: the only way to prevent you from thinking of the word "elephant" is say the experiment is about cats. This is generally considered OK, provided that you won't be upset when you find out what was really going on.

And, without the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to see why people would get upset about this experiment. I reckon Facebook users are more upset by the truth, that their "personal" feelings are so influenced by trivial aspects of their environment, than by the way Facebook demonstrated it. The truth sometimes hurts, but science isn't to blame.

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