Lesson n+1 in an ongoing series

[tigerfort]

Friends don't let friends use Facebook. And yes, there's a different link under each word.

(TLDR? A massive, and massively unethical, experiment in controlling people's mood by manipulating their facebook feed. Was given a pass by the IRB because facebook does it all the time anyway, so publishing the data was a net good. If anyone in the negative mood group committed suicide during or soon after the trial, there's a case to be made for corporate manslaughter, but of course no one will ever be allowed to know whether that happened.)

Comments

[na-lon.livejournal.com]

Gah! That's complete ethics-free. And not in a good way.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Quite. In case you've not seen it (and want to:), there's an analysis of FB's (totally point-missing) response here (http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com/2014/06/the-empire-strikes-back.html), complete with a degree of back-and-forth with one of the study's authors in the comments.

[na-lon.livejournal.com]

I just scanned the first lines: talking about effect size! Hah. As if it being a negligible effect makes it fine to run the study!

[rustica.livejournal.com]

I'm astonished FB still has any users whatsoever, considering how badly it treats them.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Semi-captive audience - all their friends are on FB too, so they'd all need to move together. That and the usual power of apathy, of course.