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NOBODY thinks that Facebook is a place to see all your friends' updates. And it has never been anything like that. What Marc was getting at was that this is A/

NOBODY thinks that Facebook is a place to see all your friends' updates. And it has never been anything like that. What Marc was getting at was that this is A/B testing. Everybody does A/B testing these days. Claiming it is "unethical" because the B group might be less happy than the A group is ridiculous. That's essentially the whole point of A/B testing. Try two things and see what makes your users happier, then you can do more of that.

walterbell 12y ago
Is there a difference between A/B testing which surveys "taste" and A/B testing which causes "behavior change"? There is the small matter of side-effects..
- anko 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. What if someone who was part of the experiment group committed suicide? Where's the duty of care?
  - neumann 12y ago
    I am guessing somewhere below their duty to their shareholders? That was sort of snark at Facebook, but it is a difficult legal question. However, it also sounds like a bit of a beat-up, like the Strava lawsuit. You are not gauranteed by Facebook for a service that allows you to communicate in a clearly defined way. They are allowed to, an do, tweak it constantly to improve whatever metric they think will result in more engagement and bottom line. Much like google tweaks their search results (or their cafeteria food) these companies are always running experiments. In this case, it resulted in a paper. The researchers who published the paper might have to ensure they upheld the ethical obligations of the journal, and any affiliated institutions. If they did, the fact this is published is a better outcome then normal. [0] http://cyclingtips.com.au/2012/06/strava-lawsuit/ http://cyclingtips.com.au/2012/06/strava-lawsuit/
imrehg 12y ago
Well, I used to think that. Back in 2004 when it started, you could and wanted to see all your friends updates, and even for years afterwards. Now, it's probably less than 10% of everything you'll ever see, others are purposefully hidden from you. Facebook was a social place, and was supposed to be "the place to keep in touch with friends", so yeah, wanted to see 100%...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  But then everyone around you and me joined as well and now an average Facebook user has over 300 friends (I myself have 568); there's no way to keep up with all their updates even if everyone sent just on average two posts a day. And that doesn't even include various thousands of pages one liked. If they let everything in unfiltered, it would probably start looking like Twitter - a place I don't frequent because it's just damn too noisy for me even if I follow just few dozen people.

walterbell 12y ago

Is there a difference between A/B testing which surveys "taste" and A/B testing which causes "behavior change"? There is the small matter of side-effects..

anko 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. What if someone who was part of the experiment group committed suicide? Where's the duty of care?
- neumann 12y ago
  I am guessing somewhere below their duty to their shareholders? That was sort of snark at Facebook, but it is a difficult legal question. However, it also sounds like a bit of a beat-up, like the Strava lawsuit. You are not gauranteed by Facebook for a service that allows you to communicate in a clearly defined way. They are allowed to, an do, tweak it constantly to improve whatever metric they think will result in more engagement and bottom line. Much like google tweaks their search results (or their cafeteria food) these companies are always running experiments. In this case, it resulted in a paper. The researchers who published the paper might have to ensure they upheld the ethical obligations of the journal, and any affiliated institutions. If they did, the fact this is published is a better outcome then normal. [0] http://cyclingtips.com.au/2012/06/strava-lawsuit/ http://cyclingtips.com.au/2012/06/strava-lawsuit/

imrehg 12y ago

Well, I used to think that. Back in 2004 when it started, you could and wanted to see all your friends updates, and even for years afterwards. Now, it's probably less than 10% of everything you'll ever see, others are purposefully hidden from you. Facebook was a social place, and was supposed to be "the place to keep in touch with friends", so yeah, wanted to see 100%...

TeMPOraL 12y ago
But then everyone around you and me joined as well and now an average Facebook user has over 300 friends (I myself have 568); there's no way to keep up with all their updates even if everyone sent just on average two posts a day. And that doesn't even include various thousands of pages one liked. If they let everything in unfiltered, it would probably start looking like Twitter - a place I don't frequent because it's just damn too noisy for me even if I follow just few dozen people.