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

This was an unauthorized, unguided, unethical, mass psychological experiment on human beings. Anyone involved should have gone to jail for crimes against humanity.

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

#5

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

Pre-2013 was a wild time on the internet. It seems like that’s when a lot of its nasty underbelly went mainstream.

The Snowden leaks were a turning point, I think, when people realized “the NSA and corporations are spying on you” wasn’t just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.

It’s mind blowing to think that most major sites on the internet (including Amazon) were not using HTTPS at that time. It’s possible Amazon used it on its payment pages, but it certainly didn’t for much of the site. Tools like FireSheep existed for years before anyone started to care that everyone from your coffeeshop to your ISP could read your plaintext traffic.

Now 9 years later we’re finally about to fix DNS (albeit with protocols hostile to reverse engineering). Then hopefully up next is fixing BGP before the bad guys realize how absurdly vulnerable it is.

All this is to say, Facebook could maybe be excused for this experiment, because our standards for “that’s messed up” were already so much lower in 2012 than they are now.

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

#6

Post by vmception » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

Do we know what specific week that was? Would like to see it affected trading patterns or the VIX.

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

#7

Post by antiterra » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

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 both? You know, an A/B test.

Product Person #1: Hmmm. Ok, but— when we’re done, let’s have some scientific review of our data just so that we can correct the record and push along the science around this stuff.

Journalist: This company deliberately made people sad

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

#8

Post by bserge » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

Yes, indeed, we should all learn not to use our emotions in online discussions. People will say and do things that they would never say in real life, even under their real name, because of the disconnection from the actual person hearing/reading/seeing that.

Funnily enough, this is how I quit Imgur for good. It's amazing. I posted something that I believed was right and got downvoted to hell.

So I started asking people "why, why do you downvote?" and got mostly laughs, memes and people calling me stupid. Except one person, who said "you care way too much about this". Indeed, I did. Thank you random person!

Not sure why but it affected me more on Imgur. Maybe it's the length of the comments? The memes that encompass a thousand words, as they say? Regardless, I just deleted my account and never went back. It's great.

Still trying to quit Reddit and HN, but they're good resources if you ignore all the stupidity. Imgur is bottom of the barrel social media, but it was fun.

And of course, this is used by various media outlets, has been for a long time.

It's all about eliciting emotions, which come from the primitive part of the brain, bypassing any advanced conscious analysis and engaging the impulse to do either what you're told (good for sales) or the opposite of it (good for spreading a message) or something in between, but it's a response that you will remember and most likely take action.

I forgot what I was trying to say. Somehow Facebook never got me, it's just a useless platform aside from contacting people.

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

#9

Post by cryptoz » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #5

Pre-2013 was a wild time on the internet. It seems like that’s when a lot of its nasty underbelly went mainstream. The Snowden leaks were a turning point, I think, when people realized “the NSA and corporations are spying on you” wasn’t just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. It’s mind blowing to think that most major sites on the internet (including Amazon) were not using HTTPS at that time. It’s possible Amazon used…

There is no excuse for this. This was a morally bankrupt and exceedingly awful thing to do. I was absolutely furious when this happened and made it a life mission to help other people know this was going on. 99% of people don't know this event happened, still.

I don't trust Facebook one bit. I assume they do this kind of illegal 'experiment' all the time now, and the only change is they stopped bragging about it.

So gross, this whole thing, it makes me mad there were no real repercussions from this. Worse yet is how many people actually support this unethical and sick experiment from Facebook.

Lots of people don't see anything wrong with it, even technical people like those on HN, and that is just as disturbing to me as Facebook actually carrying it out.

---

Edit: I'm now blocked from posting on HN (for a while I guess?), so here is my response to a poster below.

@antiterra says,

> That you’d prefer they either stayed ignorant or unconcerned to what changes they made and their effect is exceedingly awful and morally bankrupt.

I have no idea how you reached the conclusion that I would prefer either of those things. There is a massive chasm between 'perform illegal, unethical mass psychological experiments' and 'I don't care about stuff'.

---

@chatmasta says I'm not blocked, but I am. I cannot reply to you either. It says I'm posting too fast and won't let me submit any content.

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

#10

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

antiterra wrote: post #7

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…

I admit I didn’t read the article because I thought I knew the event it was referring to, but didn’t Facebook actually publish this as a psychology study? i.e. they didn’t just use it for A/B testing features but actually thought they were doing something “good” to the point of publishing a study about it. It’s laughable now lol.