British and European data cops probe Facebook user-manipulation scandal UK and Irish data watchdogs are investigating claims that Facebook failed to seek the consent of its users before allowing researchers to manipulate their emotions via newsfeed meddling. The Register asked the office of the UK's Information Commissioner if it planned to probe Facebook following widespread criticism of its …
Do we honestly believe there would be any less Facebook users if the clause had actually been included in time?
Not with the prevailing TL;DR attitude. It would indeed not have made a blind bit of difference from the users' perspective. However, from the FB side this is a problem as it had not declared this intention and thus ended up on the wrong side of Data Protection laws.
Not that they care much - I don't think the fine will even register in their accounts.
So presumably the - legal - issue isn't that the tests were done; it's that information - even if anonymous - was passed to some researchers?
For a while I thought the actual "test" were being considered illegal. When you think about how personalised websites work, that would have been nuts.
So but anyway, its Facebook; ban it for life, or something :-)
It's all just another internet too-point-oh pawn-zee scheme. Funny bit is it was all pointless research, television has known this for a long time. Good news makes folks feel good and secure so they go on about their normal lives while bad/scary/dramatic news keeps them firmly planted in front of the squawk box to see how it plays out - "we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors."
> to see if their emotions could be manipulated based on which posts they were served
Shudder.
So if these people find that explicitly manipulating the emotions of web users is illegal, that's pretty much the end of the whole thing.
Every advertisement intends to manipulate readers' emotions (greed, lust, fear, more greed, confusion, avarice, envy and some more greed). Every troll post tries to do something very similar (e.g. Apple products are overpriced and only bought by people who value style over substance) such as instill anger, laughter (at those who get angry), confusion or happiness - as Madame de Gaulle once mispronounced.
Get rid of all instances of this and we're back in the days of Gopher and newsgroups.
"Get rid of all instances of this and we're back in the days of Gopher and newsgroups."
Upsides: No windows Vista, no Javascript, Ruby, or any other of a plethora of shitty technologies and the scam-artists monetising them. Suits, management and grannies excluded by their own ignorance from from IT.
Downsides: .
>Get rid of all instances of this and we're back in the days of Gopher and newsgroups.
You make it sound so easy. If only... If only...
That aside, it seems to me that the outrage is necessarily constrained to the question of permission/notice/consent; Facebook is built almost entirely on emotional manipulation as it is, so their formally undertaking research to make the tool sharper isn't much of a reach. Offensive that Fb couldn't content itself with the impetus of the juggernaut it's created--fueled almost entirely by people's insecurities about their social position-but not a surprise. Probably the bean-counters or the shareholders put the fear into management about 'are you doing enough?'.
It's not just advertisements that are scientifically designed to fuck with your emotions. Everything from the color of paint, type of flooring and color temperature of the lighting in brick and mortar stores down to the shape of the buttons, font details and presentation of information on websites is designed to elicit an emotional response from you. The success of those things is judged by how many people take whatever action those emotions were supposed to encourage.
Emotional manipulation is so pervasive that people don't even realize it's going on all around them. But recognizing it isn't the point, the stuff that really works well on the intended target is rarely recognized by the target, but they are still effected by it. Nobody gets through the day without being effected by emotional manipulation unless they live in the wilderness. Even prisoners are subjected to it.
We all live inside a massive marketing experiment where hypothesis are validated, falsified and repostulated based on a score that begins with the currency symbol of your choice. Facebook didn't do anything other companies don't do, but Facebook is just really easy target with an overdeveloped ego. The 'Don Drapers' of the advertising world were on their way out in the 1960's, replaced by behavioral science researchers, psychologists and the same social studies professionals responsible for classic marketing practices such as those beloved by your favorite dictator. Those people are rooting through your data all day, everyday, for ways to improve yields in their experiments.
Emotionally manipulative commercial practices aren't ever going away unless Star Trek is a documentary that fell backwards through time. Where Facebook fucked up was becoming directly involved instead of letting their data customers do what they're already doing anyway. My (hopelessly?) optimistic view of all this is that the general public learns more about their role as guinea pigs in formal psychology experiments. Maybe they'll get angry enough to push back on advertisers.
'Hopelessly'? I think so. The way I see it is that kind of understanding is a death-bed realization; one of those things they'll cotton to - if they otherwise retain sufficient awareness - when they know it's all over so all the dross evaporates to leave them finally able to see. And it's not even the price of Human stupidity, it's just how we're wired; how Evolution wired us for wrestling sabre-tooth cats for the Brontoburger and hasn't progressed since.
Put it another way: I see your note of optimism and raise you a hint of futility.
Maybe. Maybe we just need a big ark to get all the Facebook users off the planet. Zuckerberg can pilot it.
The general public? Your average Soviet citizen's only interest in the KGB was as a way of getting back at someone who annoyed him. The majority of people are hard wired to accept any power structure that seems to be giving them what they want, because that makes for stability. Psychopaths in charge, ordinary people doing what they're told, and periodic inter-tribal fighting keeps the population in check.
It would be nice if we were more like bonobos, but I notice they didn't take over the world. We did.
The original paper is light on the countries of origins of the "participants"
BUT:
"The experiments took place for 1 wk (January 11–18, 2012). Participants were randomly selected based on their User ID"
AND
"such that no text was seen by the researchers. As such, it 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."
Not sure I would consider that informed consent. Supprised that the ethics comittee at Princeton bought it.
All to be found at http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
I'm surprised they managed to get useful data within one week from a sample of users chosen at random, since presumably the process involved something like:
- monitor messages in & out for a period to establish a baseline
- skew in messages to +ve vibes for a period and monitor out messages
- skew in messages to -ve vibes for a period and monitor out messages
I realise some FB users will generate sufficient data on this basis within 7 days, but what proportion of a random sample ? It would seem to bias any analysis to the most frenetic FB users, but then maybe those are the valuable ones.
Did you know that El Reg's Terms of Service allow the SPB to send your pets into space?*
It's their platform, their rules, they can do whatever they want with it.
Just because you own the platform doesn't mean you can do what you want with the users of said platform. There are laws governing what you can and cannot do.
* They don't, but there's nothing stopping them putting that clause in if they felt like it. It still wouldn't allow them to do it.
If owning something allowed you to do whatever you wanted with it a significant portion of the worlds population would be living in an enormous transparent dome together with an enormous number of cloned dinosaurs and contemporary stoats. Broadcasts, wager share and private safaris would be the core of the model. I would use the vast profits from those things to continue my, as yet, ill fated horse/tiger hybrid breeding experiments and to establish a research center geared specifically toward creating crocodile based domestic servants.
Not all laws are good, and sometimes the good ones are abused, that's just part of it. But in a lot of cases the existence of a law(s) prohibiting something are enough to dissuade most people from doing certain things. There's a universe full of not yet illegal activities to satiate whatever desires one may have; you're limited only by your imagination and resources. It's just a lot of hassle to break the law.
Although the hilarity potential is fantastically high, little good ever comes from experimenting on people without their express permission. Sure, it all starts out just fine, but sooner or later somebody is going to propose something of comic book level insanity and it'll get a green light. At any given time, full on crazy town is a lot closer than people think. Left to their own devices, Humans tend to treat each other very badly. Doubly so if you're an 'inferior' gender, race or religion. It's just better for everybody if covert medical experiments cloaked in EULA's are not only prohibited, the punishments for dicking around with that sort of thing should be quite severe.
http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles
Knowing full well how lazy students are and only select the top 2 results when doing "research" I give them a carefully crafted search term that should return the best sources first. For some queries students seems to get various results. In order to help overcome this I have mandated Chrome & Ghostery to reduce the number of "signal" google uses to screw up the results
". . . none of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account . . ."
Maybe the results weren't matched to names but you were still dicking around with 'specific users' and that's the main problem.
Specific people were part of an experiment that, by the standards of those conducting the research, was not conducted with 'informed consent'. They can point to T&Cs all they like but a long stream with generic language about 'improving services' cannot possibly be considered adequate for a psychological experiment.
...A peddler of creepy advertising, like a tobacco executive who peddles cigarettes to children in developing countries.... I'd wake up and ask myself: What am I doing with my life...???
Every single day I cloak Facebook in PR spin about 'being social', but secretly I know that Facebook is highly 'addictive' nicotine, an advertising delivery device, that tricks people into clicking on ads....
I would drop my head in shame and ask: Why am I not trying to change the world: get us to Mars for example...? Then I'd probably go and eat a bullet...
" ...A peddler of creepy advertising, like a tobacco executive who peddles cigarettes to children in developing countries.... I'd wake up and ask myself: What am I doing with my life...???
If I was the anon coward who had posted this same message at least 3 times now, in different El Reg forums, I'd be wondering similar.
Until you find someone has created a Facebook identity exactly like you for purposes of fraud. Join Facebook, create an account with only essential data to show it's you, lock it down and never respond to their emails. Then when a potential employer wants to see your Facebook page, let them.
I don't think you even need to join facebook to be in the db, you will be cross referenced from contacts who's chins still glisten with the Kool-aid.
I would not mind betting they are already advertising to, or are profiling FB users, from data gleened from their faceb-less contacts. Data built up by cross reference is probably also not covered by gentleman advertisers agreements.
Luckily I have no friends now, and those who admitted to being on facebook have long since "disappeared".
"I don't think you even need to join facebook to be in the db, you will be cross referenced from contacts who's chins still glisten with the Kool-aid."
It's called a "negative profile". And when you are tagged in pictures by your so-called friends, your privacy is lost.
Facebook's code, Facebook's service, Facebook's service. The mugs (i.e. users) gave Facebook an irrevocable, royalty free, global license to use everything they handed over for any purpose whatsoever.
That was their choice, they were free to make it. Now that Facebook has done something with their own products, the mugs are crying like little bitches. Well, boo-hoo.
If you don't like it; stop using Facebook! No one is forcing you.
A waste of taxpayer's money.
I wouldn't hold out much hope of the Irish being able to do much, here is their rather tiny office that is already a source of much mirth here in Ireland. A toothless watchdog in a very small kennel if ever there was one. the remit from central government seems to be don't bite the hand that feeds it (large tech companies), that don't much pay much tax, but hey that's another story.
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=105581465507343354317.0004656675b62ffc5701c&cd=2&ie=UTF8&ll=53.14849,-7.183192&spn=0.000986,0.001749&z=15&iwloc=00047a71f498df5f95aa8
This is not the first time the folks at Facebook have needed guidance.
http://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/2012/08/120810facebookdo.pdf
And, thanks to the effort of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, they'll be given another lesson. http://epic.org/privacy/ftc/facebook/Facebook-Study-Complaint.pdf .
That lesson is: If you are unable to make wise decisions regarding your interactions with others, others will make the decisions for you.
Those hundreds of thousands of people have the right to be notified that they were subjects of this study and then they have the right to decide if they want to initiate a class action law suit.
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