Maybe it's unethical in academic context, but in public service context, you have an existing service, and you're in charge of improving it. When you have an i

Maybe it's unethical in academic context, but in public service context, you have an existing service, and you're in charge of improving it. When you have an improved algorithm, would you change your algorithm all at once for everybody, or would you test your change on small % of users, before you go full-scale? You'd do the latter. There's no better option. Because if you're wrong, your impact is much more devastating. In other words, there's always an algorithm filtering your feed. If that was unethical, it makes Facebook unethical by merely existing.