Facebook has proven once again that it does not care about its users' privacy and that it may manipulate their users' emotional well-being for corporate profit. In an explosive article in The Atlantic it is alleged that Facebook intentionally manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users as part of an experiment about emotional contagion on social networks.
In the past, it appears Facebook related research was focused on analyzing the information users upload. In contrast, this appears to be the first time Facebook has publicly acknowledged that it was intentionally manipulating its users' news feeds for psychological experimentation. Is this the first time this has occurred? If not, is Facebook prepared to come clean about this matter and all similar user experiments?
According to the New York Times, "[t]he company [Facebook] says users consent to this kind of manipulation when they
agree to its terms of service. But in the quick judgment of the
Internet, that argument was not universally accepted." I have reviewed Facebook's Terms of Service and it appears it may be a legal super hero Plastic Man stretch (think South Park Humancentipad episode about terms of service) that users agreed to psychological experimentation by agreeing to Facebook's terms of service.
The National Institutes of Health
(NIH) which is located about a mile from my office has a very detailed
history about the laws relating to the protection of human subjects who
are part of an experiment. Did Facebook violate the spirit or the letter of any of these laws?
It would not surprise me if Facebook and/or other digital platforms update their terms of service to clearly state they are able to perform this type of troubling psychological testing on users. While it is too soon to speculate on whether the experiment abided by Facebook's terms of service and traditional subject informed consent rules, this should be a wake up call to regulators to look more closely at the data collection and usage practices of the digital ecosystem.
Did Facebook inform the FTC about this experiment during its 2012 investigation that culminated in the 2012 FTC Consent Order that alleged Facebook violated its users' privacy. Does performing psychological experiments on users without expressed informed consent violate this order?
The bottom line is that this should be a wake up call to those who post on Facebook and utilize platforms that use your personal information for behavioral advertising purposes and/or sell it to data brokers. As I stated on June, 12, 2014, "I don't advise anyone who values their privacy to post personal information to Facebook because it has an abysmal record when it comes to protecting user privacy." Facebook's latest actions demonstrate that it believes its users are nothing more than lab rats who give up all of their rights when agreeing to Facebook's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
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