This is a reply to a fellow students blog about Facebook’s deliberate attempt at changing users moods by only showing them specific content, this blog post can be found here: http://blogs.ubc.ca/liamadams/2014/09/10/should-facebook-be-allowed-to-manipulate-our-moods/
Everyone and their mothers has heard of how Facebook has done a massive social experiment on its users by showing a group of people sad stories generally and another group happy stories generally and has monitored their actions and posts over time to see that this treatment has, in fact, changed their mood. I understand why people might not be happy that Facebook is doing this but I want want to be the Devil’s Advocate here and say how did no one already know that this was happening? With the amount of specific data Facebook has on its users it surely is not just storing them, everyone should know that their psyches are actively being manipulated by major corporations and that is just the way the world works. This kind of information is extremely valuable in our world today and business will use this to gain many advantages and capital. Also does no one else see the value of having a service that can do these experiments in order to provide so much data on human behaviour? I think there is a lot of value in this information and since we knowingly make accounts and choose to use these services then we should be fine if companies want to experiment with us.
Original article: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/06/we-shouldnt-expect-facebook-to-behave-ethically