back to article Facebook: Yes, we made you SAD on PURPOSE... for your own good

Facebook has hit back at its critics after the social network instructed researchers to meddle with its users' "news feeds" in order to manipulate their emotions. The free-content ad network sparked anger when it emerged its data scientist Adam Kramer gave a green light to researcher to filter out positive and negative posts …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Truth4u

    yeah we're just going to select what posts you see mmkay

    its for your own good mmmkay.

    we're just going to delete the ones we don't think you should be seeing mmmkay.

    dont worry about it theres no need for you to be aware of this mmmmmkay

    1. veti Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: yeah we're just going to select what posts you see mmkay

      Facebook does this all the freakin' time. They make no attempt to hide it.

      The average Facebook user has 338 "friends". If the average user makes 1 post per day, and you see (say) 15 posts when you log in, how do you think it selects those 15 out of the 338 available?

      I don't know. My bet is, it's an algorithm that's constantly being tweaked, that takes into account the age of each update, number of likes, and how much you tend to interact with that particular friend on FB, among probably many other factors (such as how much they're paying FB to promote their posts).

      And for a trial period, they introduced another factor into this algorithm - the "mood" of each post - and fed a differently-weighted version to each of two different subsets of users.

      Seriously, I don't get how this is such a big deal.

      1. solo

        Re: yeah we're just going to select what posts you see mmkay

        "..I don't get how this is such a big deal.."

        You don't have to get it..you'll be fed that you have "338 friends".

      2. Tom 13

        Re: Seriously, I don't get how this is such a big deal.

        NSA trawling everybody's data but not actually doing anything with most of it, that's a problem. Facebook actually submitting millions of users to a psychological test without consent and you don't get it?

        I'll be honest, I've personally been "meh" about it, but only for myself and only because outside of the occasional visit home when my mother wants me to send her some stuff for Farmville, I haven't touched my accounts there in about two years, maybe three. But I DO get that if I were a regular FB user, particularly one who was attempting to use it to stay in touch with Friends and Family, I would be pissed (US, not UK) at this sort of revelation.

  2. IGnatius T Foobar
    Big Brother

    Abusive relationship

    Facebook users are in an abusive relationship. They keep thinking that Facebook is going to change, that it's going to somehow have a change of heart and stop beating the crap out of them. Guess what kids, it's not going to change. It's time to quit Facebook.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Abusive relationship

      I think you're wrong about Facebook. It does really love its users' money/data/privacy. So I think Facebook will change.

      ...

      ...

      For the worse.

  3. Uffish

    Natural Selection

    I don't use Facebook so I don't know much about it. I would guess that it is in business to make money, which is ok, and to look after its own interests which may or may not be ok. The traditional approach to this situation is free competition and the handicapping of monopolies.

    As a disinterested onlooker may I suggest nuking from LEO and seeing if a replacement occurs and if it is any different; purely as a sociological experiment, and in the interests of pure science, of course.

  4. Whiskers
    FAIL

    Just digging themselves into a deeper hole

    From Kramer's Facebook post:

    "[...]

    The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product. We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out. At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook. We didn't clearly state our motivations in the paper.

    [...]"

    In other words, Facebook are prepared to distort reality to preserve their own business.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy
      Joke

      Re: "Facebook are prepared to distort reality"

      Doesn't Apple have the patents for that?

      1. Stoneshop
        Coat

        Re: "Facebook are prepared to distort reality"

        Just look at the distorted reality. If it has rounded corners, it's Apple's.

    2. veti Silver badge

      Re: Just digging themselves into a deeper hole

      How exactly does that differ from, say... every advertiser in the world ever?

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: Just digging themselves into a deeper hole

        Adverts are generally obviously trying to sell something.

        Most people are clearly ok with seeing adverts a lot of the time, or even deliberately seeking out an advert-laden medium as they watch commercial TV.

        However, this is manipulating the users by artificially changing the content, hiding posts which they probably will have wanted to see.

        It's like broadcasting two versions of Corrie - one where everything went wrong for the characters and one where everything went right, and seeing if it made the viewers happy or sad without their knowledge

        - Except that a week of a soap opera without disaster for someone would be suspicious in itself, which isn't true of Facebook.

  5. breakfast Silver badge

    Positive results

    Apparently Facebook's experiments reveal that they definitely can provoke an emotional response. And not just in the users they experimented on.

    Good work.

  6. Mike Taylor

    Any algorithm will show bias

    If you aren't going to show all news items (which is a challenge in itself), you have to have a method / algorithm to decide what items you are going to show. It seems reasonable to test the effect of potential biases. Although Kramer doesn't have an academic affiliation, the other authors do, which usually obliges researchers to go through ethics committees for such experiments. There's no evidence in the (pretty lightweight) paper to say they do, but that's usually down to the journal's policies - still, it'd be nice to know

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    conducted for a single week in 2012

    "...conducted for a single week in 2012"

    read: fuck off, 2 years in the web 2.0 is like a millennium in the old, analogue. Spent and we're good now!

    "none of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account"

    read: we say we anonymize data, so fuck off

    "We do research to improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible."

    This one is straight from the Book of "fuck-off quotes".

    read: we do research to spam our sheep into oblivion

    "We carefully consider what research we do..."

    read: "we know how to shear the sheep, so fuck off"

    "There is no unnecessary collection of people’s data"

    read: prove us wrong and have a good day

    1. Mr Fuzzy

      While I may agree with many of your points,

      Could people please lay off with the "sheep," or "sheeple," thing?

      It's hackneyed to the point of uselessness, comes off as smug and superior, and turns away the very people you might hope to sway.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: While I may agree with many of your points,

        Oh dear, no sheep?! But it's such a fitting analogy! You give them "free" grass and you shear them and give them more free stuff and shear them more. You shoo them, or give them a kick, and all they do is - bleat. Same with milking cows.

        No sheep... well, hamsters maybe? I guess you feed them (...) bit by bit and they just stuff it in their pouches, til they can hardly move along. Pretty comical, eh?

      2. Steven Roper

        Re: While I may agree with many of your points,

        "It's hackneyed to the point of uselessness, comes off as smug and superior, and turns away the very people you might hope to sway."

        AKA "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

        And it's amazing how many people these days forget this simple lesson. For example, I myself would probably be more supportive of the ideals of the various "equality" movements, were their proponents less disposed to snottily dismiss anyone who opposes them as an unenlightened overprivileged bigot, instead of logically explaining where they think the opponent is wrong. I wonder how much opposition to their causes results from this vinegar/honey effect, as opposed to genuine political disagreement with their ideas?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    we have always been rats in a cage

    Watch any advert and it tells you its product is 'just for you'.

    So has anything really changed here, apart from there being no product this time?

    1. tomban
      Coat

      Re: we have always been rats in a cage

      Despite all your rage?

    2. Christopher E. Stith

      Re: we have always been rats in a cage

      If you have a Facebook account you are the product. Their business model is to keep eyeballs on the site as much as possible so their advertisers can serve content to you. They advertise you to the consumer goods companies.

  9. Rob Carriere

    It'd be interesting to think through how hard it would be to do a purely peer-to-peer facebook alternative. Kill the vampire in the middle, so to speak.

    1. guybles
      Big Brother

      A peer-to-peer Facebook alternative. Isn't that what used to be called "talking"?

    2. Anonymous Coward 101

      Email has already been invented.

      1. Whiskers
        Coat

        not only email

        Usenet is still operating.

        1. Tom 13

          Re: not only email

          Depending of course on your definition of "operating". Last time I checked, which admittedly was more than 5 years ago and probably closer to 10 the ratio of spam to data was about what I find in my Yahoo spam box.

    3. Old Handle

      As I understand it that's what Diaspora set out to be. But I've never tried it though, so I don't know how well it accomplishes that goal.

      1. Captain DaFt

        Here's a link for anyone interested:

        https://diasporafoundation.org/

        1. Rob Carriere

          > Here's a link for anyone interested:

          > https://diasporafoundation.org/

          Thanks. That looks interesting.

      2. The Vociferous Time Waster

        Re:

        90%+ of social network users don't know or care about this sort of stuff. They use what everyone else uses.

  10. Don Jefe

    PNAS

    Haha!

    PNAS: n. the pseudo-phonetic spelling of penis if spoken by a person with an accent from the Southern United States.

    1. Tom 13

      Re: PNAS

      Not enough "hold that tone" characters for it to be that phonetic spelling in the local dialect.

  11. Lost in Cyberspace

    Missing the point, FB

    I'd have thought that it was a give that data was anonymised.

    My problem with it is that they were deliberately trying to manipulate peoples' moods.

    There are probably a fair few people that rely on seeing positive posts from others (family etc) to get through their day/week/month/year. This is bloody disgraceful, FB.

  12. Amorous Cowherder
    Facepalm

    PNAS?

    Yeah, there certainly a lot of those running Facebook!

  13. Gav

    Your handy translation

    "This research was conducted for a single week in 2012 and none of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account."

    We're not telling anyone who we messed with. Including them. So that's ok.

    "We do research to improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible. A big part of this is understanding how people respond to different types of content, whether it’s positive or negative in tone, news from friends, or information from pages they follow. "

    This is an important step in determining how to make our cattle happy and most likely to click the adverts provider by our users. The cattle will eat whatever they're fed.

    "We carefully consider what research we do and have a strong internal review process."

    We consider carefully if the research is in our interests and if there's money to be made. No, we're not sharing how we decided. We're very comfortable about this, so what's the problem?

    There is no unnecessary collection of people’s data in connection with these research initiatives "

    We decide what's necessary.

    "and all data is stored securely."

    It's our data, isn't it? So you can bet it's secure. The sooner you get this into your thick heads the quicker this discussion will be over.

  14. Big Al
    FAIL

    Serious studies get approved in advance by medical ethics committees. This one doesn't seem to have done so. QED.

  15. ma1010
    Joke

    Misprint corrected

    Facebook has hit back at its critics, after the content-free ad network's data scientist...

    There, fixed it for you.

  16. lurker

    The possibilities are huge

    That's a nice citizenship you have there, it would be a shame if someone were to turn up the 'angry' dial on our Regional Mood Control Panel for the UK for a few weeks before the election...

    So, about this 'tax on global megacorps' law you were about to pass...?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Manipulate my mind, but don't mess with the UI I know and love

    "Facebook knows you don't want to know **EVERYTHING** your friends do, so using complex algorithms, we carefully select the most miserable posts that we know you won't want to read. Going to work in the morning? Check your Facebook news feed before you leave and feel like shit! Thanks to Facebook, you can be made to feel like a warmed up turd all week"

    After dicking with the UI and the news feed filters and people going nuts because of it, this is the one that shows that all Facebook users are Zuck's bitches and nobody among the baby-sharing, bacon-snapping morons will care;

    Manipulate my mind, but don't mess with the UI!

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Manipulate my mind, but don't mess with the UI I know and love

      Hadn't really thought about it before, but yeah, that was around the time I stopped using FB. That and it was synergistically linked to Zynga's free game server performance going to shit. And I mostly hung out for the Zynga games in the first place. I had even just reached the point where I would have been willing to toss them a Hamilton a month for the service.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    The ultimate defence...

    ...yer 'onour...

    I actually said, I LOVE school and and it is da bomb", but Facebook changed it to "I HATE school and I'm going to bomb it"

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I love the American way..

    When in a hole, buy mining equipment..

    1. Tom 13

      Re: I love the American way..

      Not just the equipment. Looks like they also brought in all those UMW members who are now unemployed as a result of the new coal regs.

  20. This post has been deleted by its author

  21. The Vociferous Time Waster
    Happy

    Watch this...

    http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

    Watch it then up vote me.

    You're welcome.

  22. Dan Paul
    Joke

    This gives a whole new meaning to...

    Farcebook.

    You can not believe ANYTHING you see on this site (farcebook) because we manipulate it to get the most emotional response from you. Since MOST of you are "sheeple" ( Meaning: for the obviously ignorant among you, you are frikking sheep people who act like herd animals, enjoy getting screwed in the posterior and are too stupid to make up your own mind) you deserve this crap, along with people who complain about being labeled "sheeple".

  23. cybersaur
    Devil

    Provocative business strategery

    Meddling with users' news feeds to manipulate their emotions is what Fox "News" does everyday!

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If I was a Facebook engineer...

    ...A peddler of creepy advertising, like a tobacco executive who peddles cigarettes to children in developing countries.... I'd wake up and ask myself: What am I doing with my life...???

    Every single day I cloak Facebook in PR spin about 'being social', but secretly I know that Facebook is highly 'addictive' nicotine, an advertising delivery device, that tricks people into clicking on ads....

    I would drop my head in shame and ask: Why am I not trying to change the world: get us to Mars for example...? Then I'd probably go and eat a bullet...

    1. Chairo
      Joke

      Re: If I was a Facebook engineer...

      I'd probably go and eat a bullet...

      Here you are: enjoy your meal!

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't really see the issue

    Facebook is a site filled with willing guinea pigs. Nobody is forcing anybody to participate, everybody is there of their own free will. You don't like what they're doing? Don't use them. If enough people don't like what they're doing they will notice this.

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like