Thirty-two months ago, Facebook conducted an “emotional contagion” study on how the emotions of people around us, as expressed through status updates, affect our own.
Unsurprisingly, the study found that our friends’ posts do, in fact, influence what we share about our lives. More shocking to the researchers, however, was the outburst of opinions about ethics that exploded online after the study was published.
Basically, over a period of one week in January 2012, data scientists altered certain Facebook users’ newsfeeds to contain either fewer positive or fewer negative words. The emotional content in their resulting posts (or lack thereof) was measured against a randomly selected control group. Nearly 700,000 users unknowingly contributed data.
In the age of online survey panels and interactive infographics, collecting and distributing data is easier than ever. Facebook’s secret experiment on its users struck a chord, and people began to raise important questions about the study, online privacy, and the general practices of market research.
Did Facebook violate experimental norms of informed consent? Is Facebook legally obligated to obtain consent? Is Facebook allowed to manipulate our emotions? What sort of precedent does this set for social and market research? What if someone was genuinely affected by the study? Is this data scientific? Does the end justify the means? What can we concretely change in the future without relegating data analyses to conduct research behind closed doors? How can we encourage ethical collaboration between academia and corporates?
Tarleton Gillepsie of Culture Digitally calls this reaction “a collective groan from our society as it adjusts to a culture that is algorithmically organized.”
Gillepsie suggests that we are used to two types of information services. There are the direct methods: telegrams, telephones, snail mail. Third-party establishments govern the usage of these channels; we expect them to do their job and make the connection happen. The rest — what we say or write or include or exclude — is up to us, and only us.
There are also mass media: newspapers, radio, film. We quickly realized that these content producers target an audience and learned to expect the psychological toying of cheesy soap operas and watch-it-three-times-in-one-episode advertisements.
And then comes Facebook, which along with other social media, falls into a grey area. What started as a simple social network has become one of the most universal methods of communication, connection, and advertising. The lines between what is personal and what is public have blurred.
We can treat Facebook like yet another mailbox — there is a direct-message option on virtually every social media site — but there is also a common room of information, in this case, the newsfeed, which is typically treated with algorithms already, with or without an experiment.
It isn’t just social media. Online stores track your search history for personalized suggestions. Travel pages are known to increase prices on a return visit from the same computer. Entire sites are dedicated to customized web experiences.
And yes, it can be creepy or unsettling. That might be the problem. We shy away from the discomfort and choose to ignore the realities of the ever-changing world of information technology.
This discussion, about what is OK and what is not, is serious. But the truth is, regardless of how data is obtained, and how disturbing the results, what information we have is important to know, important to understand, and important to share.
In light of that, here are a few things we can take away:
Be informed.
User experience is no longer a choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream, but is rather like a dessert bar that’s tailored to the individual preferences of each person. After the study was published, it became apparent that not everyone knows that Facebook regularly curates/manipulates our newsfeed content. Being informed doesn’t necessarily mean wading through Facebook’s 9,000+ words of data use policy. Maybe set up a news alert for your favourite sites, or read the e-mails they send about changes in the terms of use.
Speak up.
Online privacy and permission affects every single person. Even that hipster friend who doesn’t use Facebook, because an occasional photo of him probably pops up anyway. Consequently, this conversation also has to take public opinion into consideration. Many bloggers have recognized the value of studies such as this one and have recommended that Facebook give users the choice to “opt in” for future studies. Others suggested more transparent A/B testing, including how future research should be conducted. Both propositions are imperfect, but they are voices in the crowd, working toward a real solution.
Take a break.
Facebook did this study, and several others, in the name of customer service — essentially, to keep its users around for as long as possible. It is important, now more than ever before, to be aware of our relationship with social media, of how reliant, or dare I say addicted, we have become. I’m going into my last year in college, so I get that taking a break isn’t as easy as it sounds. My classmates receive hundreds of e-mails, so Facebook chat is the only way to reach them. My professors post discussion topics on Twitter. Disappearing social media is not a long-term option for many of us. Instead, try taking a social media Sabbath, or setting a time limit on how long you can spend scrolling down a bottomless page.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Joel Mann.
