Facebook is facing criticism after it emerged it had conducted a psychology experiment on 700,000 users. The test saw Facebook manipulate news feeds to control which emotional expressions the users were exposed to. The research was done to gauge if "exposure to emotions led people to change their own posting behaviours".
Facebook said there was "no unnecessary collection of people’s data". "None of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account," the social networking giant added. Cornell University and the University of California at San Francisco were involved in the study. But some have criticised the way the research was conducted and raised concerns over the impact such studies could have.
"Let’s call the Facebook experiment what it is: a symptom of a much wider failure to think about ethics, power and consent on platforms," Kate Crawford posted on Twitter. Lauren Weinstein tweeted: "Facebook secretly experiments on users to try make them sad. What could go wrong?" Meanwhile, Labour MP Jim Sheridan, a member of the Commons media select committee has called for an investigation into the matter.
"This is extraordinarily powerful stuff and if there is not already legislation on this, then there should be to protect people," he was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper. "They are manipulating material from people’s personal lives and I am worried about the ability of Facebook and others to manipulate people’s thoughts in politics or other areas.