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In June 2014, Facebook users were in for a shock when they discovered that they were the guinea pigs of an experiment that was carried out in 2012. Users’ news feeds were manipulated, with the purpose of examining behaviours from the addition of more positive or negative content.

Robert Klitzman from Columbia University expresses his anger towards the experiment, strongly believing it violated research ethics. While I do agree with him and understand his point of view, I believe it can be justified and also that it was a strategic way to conduct easy market research.

One of Klitzman’s points include, “What if a depressed person became more depressed?” A large variety of people use this popular social-networking website, and there could have been many people suffering from depression. If a consumer with this condition was exposed to more negative posts, their health could have potentially worsened. With people’s emotions being negatively impacted, this is a major con from the experiment.

However, creating a Facebook account WAS one’s choice. Each person who created an account DID agree to the terms and conditions, which had included letting Facebook use personal information for internal operations and research/service improvement. 
As consumers of this free service, we essentially agreed to take part in this research.

While this experiment was certainly not very ethical, as users were not notified of the process, Facebook was able to utilize this inexpensive and smart method to conduct market research.