Interesting & contested view of that Facebook study, by its co-author: ""If you say, 'I don't want to be experimented on,' ... what does that mean?"[Google is ] constantly needing to tweak their algorithm. If I say, 'I want to opt out of that,' does that put me back to Google search 2004? " Others beg to differ: "It's not A/B testing. It's just b…

"The absolute worst thing that can happen as a result of this furore is that (a) Facebook keep any and all data they collect private, and run these sorts of studies behind closed doors, and (b) scientists wouldn’t want to touch their data anyway, for fear of public outrage. This would be disastrous, because social media hosts a wealth of informati…

Truly excellent, insightful piece. "if Facebook did make the content that users see more positive, should we simply be happy? ... If Alice is happier when she is oblivious to Bob’s pain because Facebook chooses to keep that from her, are we willing to sacrifice Bob’s need for support and validation? This is a hard ethical choice ... Facebook is…

“Do companies that create platforms that are broadly adopted (and which become almost obligatory to use) have ethical obligations in the conduct of research that go beyond what we would expect from, say, market research firms?"

"We’re tracking the ethical, legal, and philosophical response to this Facebook experiment here. "

"Whether we regard the Facebook study as one in the field of psychology or market research, there are ethical standards that each requires of its members. Let's take an in-depth look at each" Guess what? It doesn't do that well. Surprise, surprise. - Facebook's Trust Problem | Scott Monty

"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. " - Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment · Newswire · The A.V. Club