Did this go through an Institutional Review Board?
Facebook seems to do lots of “studies” like this with no consideration of ethics or the rights or welfare of the human research subjects recruited (willingly or otherwise) into these “studies”.
I mean… If this sort of thing happened without an IRB review in academia, people could be barred from funding, lose their jobs, or end up in jail.
And yet...
It is an important consideration, actually to understand that algorithms designed to manipulate human behavior *is* human experimentation.
And that the results of this human experimentation are altering behavior, moods, with real outcomes for society.
We’ve created tools in social media that are some of the most powerful tools in history… Think about it… The most powerful thing on the planet is the ability to communicate an idea.
Humanity simply has not been ready for the massive changes social media has wrought.
…We should be talking about that, and the ways that social media presents, manipulates and edits information resulting in behavioral outcomes.
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