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Let's not go overboard with those "psychological experiments". It wasn't like they were injecting you with radium. They simply ran different newsfeed algorithms
by matt4077 9y ago
Let's not go overboard with those "psychological experiments". It wasn't like they were injecting you with radium. They simply ran different newsfeed algorithms and tested for correlated change in behaviour.
- mattnewton 9y agoWithout consent, without any sort of internal ethics review. The real problem is that they probably learned just to keep their mouth shut, not to stop doing those things. I'm sure it's all kosher by the TOS. But it's still the kind of actions any university's IRB would stop or require rigorous user protections, both to protect the University's brand and to treat people with respect.
- Quarrelsome 9y agoso is A/B testing also immoral?
- mattnewton 9y agoA/B testing is no more immoral than HTML, it's what you do with the tool that makes it moral/immoral.
- opportune 9y agoIt wasn't an experiment to see how people were able to recognize different animals at different times of the day. They were deliberately altering people's moods just to see if they could. That may not sound like much but considering they did it over thousands of people, there's no telling the cumulative effects over people's mental health as a result of their poorly managed experiment.