Facebook’s Dangerous Mind Games
Courtesy of Stuart Miles
Did Facebook experiment on you? Are the playing with your mind? According to reports Facebook conducted an experiment on over 600,000 of its users seemingly without their permission. ComputerWeekly.com reported that Facebook and Cornell University and the University of California conducted the experiment two years ago over a single week. The three together filtered users’ newsfeeds to study the effects on users’ emotions.
The experiment was revealed this week as part of a new study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In one test users’ were denied exposure to their friends’ “positive emotional content”. The result was fewer positive posts of their own.
The second test reduced exposure to friends’ “negative emotional content”. This too resulted in reduced negative posts by those being tested.
The experiment determined: “Emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks.”
Facebook defends its experiment stating there was “no unnecessary collection of people’s data” and that “none of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account.”
The experiment has caused concern and governments are responding. In England Labour MP Jim Sheridan, a member of the Commons media select committee called for parliamentary investigations. There is concern that Facebook and other social networks are manipulating emotional and psychological responses of its users by editing the information they receive.
“This is extraordinarily powerful stuff and if there is not already legislation on this, then there should be to protect people,” Sheridan told the Guardian.
“They are manipulating material from people’s personal lives and I am worried about the ability of Facebook and others to manipulate people’s thoughts in politics or other areas.
“If people are being thought-controlled in this kind of way there needs to be protection and they at least need to know about it,” said Sheridan.
Facebook believes it was important to investigate concerns that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out.
According to Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer, who co-authored the report, “I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my co-authors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused,” he said in a statement.
Facebook also stated that altering the news feeds was “consistent with Facebook’s data use policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research”.
Breaking It Down
Facebook is screwing with your mind! This company has conducted an experiment that decided what your mood is by manipulating what you read from your friends. Let me make it even simpler; they changed your friends posts to change your mood. Its called mind control!
This experiment has taken social media into a dark and ugly territory that scares me to the bone. When I hear corporations use words like “emotional contagion” I step away and you should too.
How is this information going to be used in the future? The experiment was small and the effects was equally small on those tested. But we need to remember that it was the Wright brothers that took the first step to landing on the moon. See my point?
Facebook is all about data collection and advertising. This experiment could be the first step to manipulating consumer behavior. Perhaps they can make you feel good about certain products and cause you to go out and buy it. Perhaps they can influence your mind to donate to charities by making sure you only read the good things about them. Keep in mind that Facebook follows you everywhere online including other websites and television. Facebook is becoming dangerous and this experiment proves it.
These experiments can make you feel good or bad. Perhaps a Facebook user is already depressed and this experiment pushed them to suicidal thoughts or worse. Did Facebook measure how many of the more than 600,000 people they experimented on had emotional or mental disorders and what impact they had on them? Probably not. That’s the danger of experimenting on people without their consent.
This was probably the most the most dangerous experiment of the digital age. Emotion manipulation. It’s bad enough that Facebook watches everything you do but now they have decided to play games with your mind as well.
In the final paragraph they claim that they have your permission to screw with your mind. Did you really agree to that? Yeah, you did. Facebook can change or delete your friends posts to change your mood according to their ‘data use policy’. Basically they own everything you post on Facebook. Did you know that? They can decide if you are happy or sad. The can decide if you like this product or that one. They can decide if you like this politician or that one…wait! What?
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