Facebook Draws Controversy Over News Feed Experiment

Facebook Like - CopyFacebook has come under fire on social media for an experiment conducted by its Data Science Team which aimed to manipulate the emotional state of thousands of users.

The research, which was published in the March issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed how Facebook researchers altered the algorithm that determines news feed content for almost 700,000 users for a week in 2012. During the experiment, some users had posts containing positive words hidden from their feeds, while others had posts containing negative words removed.

The researchers found that, as a result, those who saw more negative posts were significantly more likely to also post negative content, while those who saw more positive posts underwent the opposite effect, and were more likely to post positive content.

The phenomenon, known as emotional contagion, is well established within laboratory experiments, but this is the first time it has been observed and measured occurring outside of in-person interactions and on such a large scale.

While Facebooks Data Use Policy includes a provision that user information may be utilised not only for advertising but also for “internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement,” many have reacted to the news of this study with outrage.

“This is extraordinarily powerful stuff and if there is not already legislation on this, then there should be to protect people,” said Jim Sheridan, member of the Commons media select committee, in a statement to The Guardian. “They are manipulating material from peoples personal lives and I am worried about the ability of Facebook and others to manipulate peoples thoughts in politics or other areas. If people are being though-controlled in this kind of way there needs to be protection and they at least need to know about it.”

In a public Facebook post, lead researcher Adam Kramer apologised for upsetting anyone with the experiment, and said that in hindsight, “the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.” He also added that since the experiment was run, there have been changes in internal review practices, and “we have come a long way since then.”