More ethically spurious Facebook shenanigans. There are very strict rules regarding using human subjects in experiments without first fully informing them about everything involved in the experiment. Facebook got around this sticky little problem by claiming that when you agreed to the TOS whenever you happened to sign up, that indeed constituted fully informed consent that you could be used as a lab rat at any time without any further notice. So the company got together with two scientists, whose own ethical standards must also of necessity be suspect, and they MANIPULATED the emotions of more than 639,000 Facebook users by displaying more positive newsfeeds and then less positive newsfeeds, to prove their hypothesis that such a thing as emotional contagion was possible on a social network. So lets think ahead here a bit, and if these pseudo-scientists and FB have now proved that emotional contagion can be spread by the network, is it too far a step beyond to imagine that the government would demand FB either shut down or only display approved messages during crisis situations? By the way, good thinking there, Facebook, putting yet another weapon against the citizenry in our governments ever burgeoning anti-John-Doe toolkits. And you kind of shot yourselves in the foot as well, giving the Feds an open invitation to take over your network for the good of the people. Idiots. Read it and weep. Heres Forbes article, which includes a link to the academic paper.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 06:51:30 +0000
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