The world’s largest social network does it again.
Have you read the one about them selecting over half a million users, to try find evidence of emotional contagion via social networks or “wide scale transfer of positive or negative emotions between users.”
True, users have given informed consent and expect that any and all information they share online, would be analysed by the company.
But, to unwittingly participate in what can only be called a sociology study that involved manipulation of their emotional health, is a whole different ball game, Facebook!
Senior analyst at Ovum, Pamela Clark-Dickson described, “The way in which the study was conducted could have had tragic consequences for those unwitting participants who may already have been suffering poor mental health, but who were randomly selected to receive a higher proportion than usual of negative posts.”
“Gee! Could this be why I have been feeling suicidal lately?”
There is real anxiety amongst Facebook users now, about if they are unknowingly now part of some harmful experiment as well.
“Dang! I shouldn’t have taken that Facebook survey about my sexual preference, being a male who was born in Afghanistan. But the live sheep as incentive was just too irresistible!”
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The Ovum analyst also thinks it’s ironic Facebook tried to research the effects of exposure to negativity on social networks, because a proportion of Facebook users now may very well avoid Facebook, due to concerns about being in another potentially health damaging experiment.
Which brings me to this next question I have: Why do I keep seeing ads for Tongkat Ali in my timeline??
IT BYTES BACK! says: Very bad of you, Facebook. With great power, comes great responsibility. Hasn’t one of your powerful word capture and analysing thingamajigs picked that up already??
