Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment

Calliegirl

Forum Legend
Joined
Jun 4, 2012
Reaction score
5,816
Lifestyle
  1. Vegan
Nothing Facebook does anymore surprises me.

Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state.

The paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” was published inThe Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences.

It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users’ news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users.

Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network.

Result: They can! Which is great news for Facebook data scientists hoping to prove a point about modern psychology.

It’s less great for the people having their emotions secretly manipulated...

Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment
 
:fp:
Stuff like this certainly messes with my emotions. Grrrr.

Lol
 
It's the internet. Sometimes you see happy things, sometimes you see bad things. Other forms of media have been skewing the balance of news for years to sway readers/viewers and sell more of their product. I don't really see this as any different in the grand scheme of things. The lesson is not to place too much emotional stock on what you see in the faceless world of the internet, which is full of hackers and trolls and all manner of people out to manipulate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amy SF
[QUOTE="GingerFoxx, post: 193049, member: 100" The lesson is not to place too much emotional stock on what you see in the faceless world of the internet, which is full of hackers and trolls and all manner of people out to manipulate.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. :)
 
Will anyone be mad at me if I say I really don't care? :) Seriously though I don't have a lot of facebook friends because I don't need to be "friends" with every acquaintance I know and idiot I work with.

And I can't believe some of the personal crap people post on facebook. My facebook mostly has super cute pictures of my super cute cats.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amy SF
I don't care all that much either, just thought it would be interesting to post. I figure when I go on any website, chances are they doing something with your info, and manipulating you in some way to buy what they are selling.
 
I pretty much figured weird stuff was being done with my info. I mostly go on to change my banner photo to something like flowers, or I'll post about things I see on my bike rides like rainbows or baby geese. I try to keep it positive regardless of my mood, only exception was my post about my bike accident. I try to not let it all hang out like some of my FB friends status updates that I see on there, whoa. There is such a thing as sharing too much!
 
This has got me thinking, because a few months ago my feed was being bombarded with animal abuse stuff and it was getting to me enough that I mentioned to some of my friends that I might be taking/needing an Internet break...
 
This has got me thinking, because a few months ago my feed was being bombarded with animal abuse stuff and it was getting to me enough that I mentioned to some of my friends that I might be taking/needing an Internet break...
I don't care what fb says, experimenting on unsuspecting people is unethical. Just because you have some language in your very long and ever-changing privacy policy that says you can use data blah blah blah....it's not right. People need to be protected from this kind of thing, it's sick.
 
now that I think of it, I remember thinking it was weird that random things were showing up in my newsfeed, stuff that I hadn't subscribed to and wasn't interested in. It was really irritating.
 
I don't care all that much either, just thought it would be interesting to post. I figure when I go on any website, chances are they doing something with your info, and manipulating you in some way to buy what they are selling.
I agree with you on this. For example if I search for something on Google or I've looked at certain things, these similar things will come up on other sites like facebook as small advertizements. So I guess they can track what you look at. And I have found that a little unsettling. Good thing I'm pretty benign on the internet I guess. :)
 
This has got me thinking, because a few months ago my feed was being bombarded with animal abuse stuff and it was getting to me enough that I mentioned to some of my friends that I might be taking/needing an Internet break...
That would be very upsetting.