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Remember when facebook got caught running psychological experiments on its users? (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psycho

Remember when facebook got caught running psychological experiments on its users? (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...) I do not trust myself with identifying when companies tweak the algorithm to mess with my psyche. How can I trust myself with identifying with my own kids except when it becomes really obvious in the content or in their behavior? > Do we blame car manufacturers for young people driving and killing themselves or others? Cars had no seat belts, had no crumple zone, would crush the driver when the engine got pushed in. We literally put more and more requirements on cars to make them as safe as reasonably possible. If social media has negative effects why would we not legislate these companies in such a way as to reduce the negatives? You can argue there is no negative effect if you want. But if they have negatives effects then don't we need to rein them in?

nostrademons 2y ago
Pretty much every business runs psychological experiments on their customers. That's what the ad industry is, that's why retailers run sales to gather pricing data, that's what A/B testing is for. It's interesting to look at the triple standard of harm across different institutions though: Science: your job is to learn things, you must bring every possible harm you can think of from your experiment to an ethical review board, and if there's a chance it might hurt people, you can't run your experiment. Business: your job is to maximize profit, you may harm people in the pursuit of this as long as you do so within the bounds of the law. Defense: your job is to kill people, do what you want as long as it's our enemies. Clearly, people value killing foreigners > making money > discovering new knowledge.
- almatabata 2y ago
  > Pretty much every business runs psychological experiments on their customers. That's what the ad industry is, that's why retailers run sales to gather pricing data, that's what A/B testing is for. Sure but there are differences between the psychological experiments. I would argue that running a sale is benign compared to manipulating words in social media post to see how it influences your mood. What effect will that have on people with already fragile psyches? I understand its legal whatever facebook has done but still I think that there should be restrictions on the kind of psychological tests you can run like this. Unless I overestimate the effect these studies have. > Clearly, people value killing foreigners > making money > discovering new knowledge. Killing foreigners is mostly a way to maintain or gain influence so I would say its more: power > making money > discovering new. The killing foreigners part is just a means to an end.
  - ahahahahah 2y ago
    > I would argue that running a sale is benign compared to manipulating words in social media post to see how it influences your mood. What effect will that have on people with already fragile psyches? This is such a dumb or disingenuous position. Let's imagine you are a social media company, and these things happen: 1. people (researchers, media, doesn't matter) are reporting that they think the proliferation of negative sentiment on your social media is having a negative affect on user's moods. 2. based on your extensive experience and understanding of user behavior you think they are wrong. but still you recognize that if they are actually right it would be best for you to know that so you can make changes to fix it. 3. so, you decide to run an experiment where for some of the users you reduce the likelihood that they will see the types of posts that those researchers have identified as problematic, and you monitor the same sorts of signals that those researchers were looking at. 4. you get the results of your experiment. it doesn't actually matter what they say, if they say there's no effect, you now know that and apply it in the future, if they say there's a negative effect you try to mitigate it, if they say there's a positive effect maybe you try to amplify it. but really, that's not important because... 5. you tell people that you've done this research and made or not changes based on it. or it comes out in a leak that you did this by a disgruntled ex employee, or in a court case, also doesn't matter. 6. those same people as in (1), or others, frame the experiment you've done as a terrible thing where you were manipulating people's emotions for your own gain.

nostrademons 2y ago

Pretty much every business runs psychological experiments on their customers. That's what the ad industry is, that's why retailers run sales to gather pricing data, that's what A/B testing is for. It's interesting to look at the triple standard of harm across different institutions though: Science: your job is to learn things, you must bring every possible harm you can think of from your experiment to an ethical review board, and if there's a chance it might hurt people, you can't run your experiment. Business: your job is to maximize profit, you may harm people in the pursuit of this as long as you do so within the bounds of the law. Defense: your job is to kill people, do what you want as long as it's our enemies. Clearly, people value killing foreigners > making money > discovering new knowledge.

almatabata 2y ago
> Pretty much every business runs psychological experiments on their customers. That's what the ad industry is, that's why retailers run sales to gather pricing data, that's what A/B testing is for. Sure but there are differences between the psychological experiments. I would argue that running a sale is benign compared to manipulating words in social media post to see how it influences your mood. What effect will that have on people with already fragile psyches? I understand its legal whatever facebook has done but still I think that there should be restrictions on the kind of psychological tests you can run like this. Unless I overestimate the effect these studies have. > Clearly, people value killing foreigners > making money > discovering new knowledge. Killing foreigners is mostly a way to maintain or gain influence so I would say its more: power > making money > discovering new. The killing foreigners part is just a means to an end.
- ahahahahah 2y ago
  > I would argue that running a sale is benign compared to manipulating words in social media post to see how it influences your mood. What effect will that have on people with already fragile psyches? This is such a dumb or disingenuous position. Let's imagine you are a social media company, and these things happen: 1. people (researchers, media, doesn't matter) are reporting that they think the proliferation of negative sentiment on your social media is having a negative affect on user's moods. 2. based on your extensive experience and understanding of user behavior you think they are wrong. but still you recognize that if they are actually right it would be best for you to know that so you can make changes to fix it. 3. so, you decide to run an experiment where for some of the users you reduce the likelihood that they will see the types of posts that those researchers have identified as problematic, and you monitor the same sorts of signals that those researchers were looking at. 4. you get the results of your experiment. it doesn't actually matter what they say, if they say there's no effect, you now know that and apply it in the future, if they say there's a negative effect you try to mitigate it, if they say there's a positive effect maybe you try to amplify it. but really, that's not important because... 5. you tell people that you've done this research and made or not changes based on it. or it comes out in a leak that you did this by a disgruntled ex employee, or in a court case, also doesn't matter. 6. those same people as in (1), or others, frame the experiment you've done as a terrible thing where you were manipulating people's emotions for your own gain.