Which part of this conception of experimental ethics does this violate? Facebook's experiment did not directly cause the emotions, the posted content for that. Even if it did, this sort of thing is well within the bounds of normal experimentation with large systems.
This is similar to claiming that traffic experiments which change the flow of cars, in term causing some people to experience more traffic and become unhappy, are unethical. Do you think traffic experiments are unethical?
> Facebook's experiment did not directly cause the emotions, the posted content for that.
Facebook definitely caused the emotions - by deliberately choosing to show particular content.
> This is similar to claiming that traffic experiments which change the flow of cars, in term causing some people to experience more traffic and become unhappy, are unethical. Do you think traffic experiments are unethical?
If the objective of the traffic experiment had been to deliberately get a certain group of cars stuck in a traffic jam, this would absolutely be unethical.
> If the objective of the traffic experiment had been to deliberately get a certain group of cars stuck in a traffic jam, this would absolutely be unethical.
A closer analogue would be a traffic experiment designed to gauge the emotional effects of a particular route. That's an important difference.
The article itself says the experiment was designed to look for evidence of emotional contagion, which is quite different from "it was designed to make people sad".
Also, in another thread it's pointed out that the effect sizes from this study were extremely small - something like 0.3% more negative words were used by ~150k people. The effect is said to be on the same scale as any minor UI change, like a size/color change of the "like" button. So it's hard to see this as anything other than folks looking for a reason to get outraged.
> The article itself says the experiment was designed to look for evidence of emotional contagion, which is quite different from "it was designed to make people sad".
That was their research goal, yes. Their methodology was this:
> For some, that meant 90% of all "positive" posts were removed from their newsfeed for a week, rendering the social network a pit of despair.
Research can be unethical even if the intention of the research is not.
For the traffic analogy, if part of that traffic experiment would involve a routing change that researchers know will likely cause a traffic jam, then the experiment will be unethical, no matter how warranted the research may be.
That's the reason you cannot use placebos to test life-saving medication (without prior informed consent), even though it would certainly be beneficial for science if you could.
And in Facebook's case, their research goal wasn't even that ethical in the first place. Maye we can have this talk if they try to find a cure for depression through emotional manipulation, but this was literally just about preventing people from leaving Facebook:
> "At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook."
I disagree. If facebook is testing content like this then they explicitly know which content makes people sad. To manipulate someone's feed to push them stuff that knowingly makes them sad for the purpose of experimenting with someone's emotions, that is highly unethical to me.
There is a massive difference in studying and directing traffic to help make traffic flow better. The goal there is to improve driving for everyone. Facebook's goal is to intentionally make people unhappy for the sole purpose of making more money.
This is similar to claiming that traffic experiments which change the flow of cars, in term causing some people to experience more traffic and become unhappy, are unethical. Do you think traffic experiments are unethical?