"Aside from being the world’s largest social network, Facebook is also a sociologist’s dream. With 1.28 billion worldwide active users, the social network has created the most formidable data set ever seen for studying human behavior."
I'm not so sure that if people were aware at sign up time, they would have agreed to a terms of service that includes this type of manipulation.
Not one to let your data go to waste, the company employs a team of data scientists to conduct experiments with user data and behavior, as it did in a recent study, first reported by NewScientist.Whatever you think about this, as to whether or not Facebook went too far, do you believe people fully realized the implications of what they were signing up for?
According to the study, Facebook manipulated the News Feeds of 689,003 users to study whether online emotions can be contagious. For a week, some users were shown posts in News Feed containing a higher number of positive words, others were shown posts with more negative sentiments.
I'm not so sure that if people were aware at sign up time, they would have agreed to a terms of service that includes this type of manipulation.
23 comments:
I think generally people are OK with that. When I go on my occasional rants about social media, usually to my daughter and other younger folks, I don't get much traction, which I sometimes blame on me just being an old codger, but mostly attribute to them not having any problems with the possibility that they are unwitting participants in an uncontrolled social experiment.
They don't care to acknowledge anything nefarious about it. Personally privacy is not valued so much anymore.
In this morning's paper: "Facebook: Prosecutors get data on users" (disabilities fraud case). The disclosure of Facebook accounts of more than 380 people adds to the roster of clashes between authorities and Internet companies over law enforcement efforts to scrutinize peoples on-line lives for potential evidence.
All the stories with negative words were stories about the GOP and the tea party.
All the stories with positive words were stories about the democrat party.
I signed up to help The Blonde get a job (which she didn't get).
Haven't been back since.
...do you believe people fully realized the implications of what they were signing up for?
If they didn't then they were fucking stupid.
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucks
That said, I hardly think this is such an egregious "manipulation" of news. It's favoring content, not changing content, and it's pretty much becoming the standard with even worse "advertorials" (Spellcheck didn't even bother to correct that - it must be becoming a mainstream concept!) and other paid content masquerading as journalism. And if someone's relying on that sort of a site for their news anyway, they're pretty much beyond hope.
I understand there's some sort of 'Facebook depression,' where people are down because others seem happier than they. And some people try to appear happier than they are. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Get Some Face-Time With Mr. Sun
"Everyone's having more fun than me."
Is this not humanity's history?
Best to accept that life ain't a lark,
Disconnect and take a walk in the park.
With access to "the most formidable data set ever seen for studying human behavior" our valiant researchers were able to find a .1 to .2% change in use of positive or negative words correlating with previous exposure to positive or negative words. And yes, those decimal points are correct.
Nice work.
Well if anything Deb the silver lining on all this is it could demonstrate to every aficionado how shallow the whole Facebooking enterprise is, how shallow they can be in general and especially when encouraged to be by a shallow medium, and how much better it would be to question the "need" to align one's state of mind with and against the state of mind advertised by others.
One would hope, Ritmo, but most of my relatives are on facebook.
Good catch, Rabel, right on :)
Ricpic, you are correct.
Zuckerberg's entire design was based on being dumped by a girl.
It's high school all over again.
I understand that some people really use it to the maximum benefit to communicate positively with loved ones and share family photos with those far away. I get that. It's Easier than e-mail I guess.
Me? I don't care for the lack of privacy and the fact that some people tend to spy and obsess. Not healthy.
Montana, I don't think we have even begun probing the depths of shallowness yet. I suspect we may never touch the bottom.
when something is "free" what is being bought and sold is ... you.
I read that somewhere.
Oh, we will get there John. We will get there.
Deb, I can understand people needing to and enjoying their use of it when being in-touch with long-distance or extended family relatives; I've been tempted to myself. But me and my brother are 3,000 miles away and text or talk by phone a few times a week to every day and Skype/Facetime when we feel like it. Not relating to others is a choice, and Facebook cutely reduces that choice to an easy-peasy avatarization of one's loved ones and not-so-loved-ones and their day-to-day lives, almost in the form of a cartoon strip. But the whole question that I had from the beginning and never let go of was: Why? What prevents the call, the email, the text, or the meet-up? If someone needs space or has trouble relating to someone better, they should just say so, or say why.
Luckily I think the medium is forcing people to realize this.
But I, for one, am glad that my concern for my own career, anonymity and professional interests dissuaded me from ever selling my info online to a twenty-something pimple-faced awkward asshole.
That cartoon is showing two dudes have a standard cafe breakfast of bacon and eggs with toast cut into triangles to jab the egg yolks.
My food blog photos are backed up on Flickr that has a much more in depth social network community thing going on than Photobucket where my photos are actually linked. Flickr's stats are more complete too. I've well surpassed a million views on Flickr and the photos that reliably get the most views are just such meals as you can get any hour of any day at Denny's. From all over the world it is those plain breakfasts such as my dad ate
every
single
day
of his
life.
He was buried in a coffin the shape of a plate. <-- kidding.
No. He was cremated worse than Mum's toast. <-- kidding again.
No seriously, he was flipped with a spatula directly into his grave <-- STOP it already.
Lawyer joke related by the understated John Derbyshire
Back in the days of British rule in Ireland, a circuit court was sitting in a remote country district there. At a certain point in one case, the presiding judge brushed the snuff from his surtout, leaned over his bench, and said to the defendant's council: "Mr. O'Shaughnessy, has your client never heard the expression sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas?" Counsel turned to the bench, pulled himself up to his full height, gripped his lapels, and replied: "M'Lud, in the remote fishing village in County Kilkenny where my client lives, they speak of little else."
Interestingly, Facebook's manipulations had no impact on people who are not using Facebook.
I don't know, Haz.
My cousin's in-laws conduct their feuds on facebook.
Also, I felt the need to gently chastise my young niece for 'liking' a slam my second cousin made against her sister-in-law.
A friend unfriended his in-laws and his young niece for not telling him his young daughter was spending the night at a boyfriends house.
I 'have' to listen to all this BS.
From here on out we are screwed. Technium.
How anonymous are you really, Ritmo? I think the odds are they know who you are, even if you didn't use your real name to register your blogger account or your gmail account.
Hi fellow pubes and haters of the gay.
Sorry I haven't posted much but with my high powered six figure job, and weekend jaunts with the husband to cape/islands/maine/berkshires, I am unable.
I hope you are all having a terrific summer....and never forget to keep reaching for the sky!!!!
tits.
Facebook knows who I am? But I don't have a Facebook account. That would be weird.
That's part of the whole problem I have about these complaints. It's like people don't even realize that everything you commit to the part of the web that you upload things to and fill out blanks on is voluntary.
I volunteered not to upload anything to the section of the web owned by the guy calling all his customers and anyone else who trusts him with their information "dumb fucks", while simultaneously putting even the word and concept of trust in scare quotes.
Lo and behold, the web isn't actually owned by one person or corporation.
and never forget to keep reaching for the sky!!!!
Titus is referring to the rainless rainbow.
No seriously, he was flipped with a spatula directly into his grave
Did he go over easy?
At least he wasn't smothered and covered.
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