14 DAY TRIAL // And there you have it, the one thing we’ve all been waiting for in the past week: Facebook’s emotion manipulation experiment is going to be investigated in Europe.
The United Kingdom and Ireland are going to launch a probe into the controversial psychological study that took place on the social network, writes The Register.
“We’re aware of this issue, and will be speaking to Facebook, as well as liaising with the Irish data protection authority, to learn more about the circumstances,” said a spokesperson with the UK Information Commissioner.
The Office of the Data protection in Ireland has already been in contact with the social network over the privacy issues, including consent, that come packed with the research.
The “issue” mentioned above is the study conducted by the social network in January 2012 and which was recently made public. The research tried to figure out whether someone’s mood could influence others on the social network to produce a sort of emotional contagion.
The results of the study confirmed the theory, but the problem isn’t with the purpose of the study or the results, but with the way it was conducted.
More specifically, Facebook randomly chose nearly 700,000 users and fiddled with their newsfeed algorithm. Some of them saw more positive messages on their feeds, while others saw more negative messages.
The moral issues of such a move are many, since users have certainly never consented to being guinea pigs, even if they did agree to the company’s policies, which added the reference to using data for “research” only four months after the actual study took place.
“A big part of this is understanding how people respond to different types of content, whether it’s positive or negative in tone, news from friends, or information from pages they follow. We carefully consider what research we do and have a strong internal review process. There is no unnecessary collection of people’s data in connection with these research initiatives and all data is stored securely,” Facebook said on the issue.
Furthermore, even if the data use policy was only modified after 700,000 users were turned into test subjects, the social network states that suggesting the corporate research was conducted without permission is “complete fiction” because as soon as someone signs up for Facebook, their permission is asked to use the information to “provide and enhance the services” that are being offered.
Well, the Brits and the Irish are looking into things and they’re certainly not going to be the last ones to launch such an investigation.