Facebook apologies for deceiving thousands of users during controversial News Feed experiment
- In 2012, Facebook manipulated the feeds of 689,003 users during one week
- It edited feeds to make either negative or positive posts more prominent
- The results were published over the weekend in the journal PNAS
- Facebook has apologized for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety that was caused
- During the test, negative posts received more positive responses
- A reduction in positive news feed items was met with negative posts
Following
reports Facebook manipulated the feeds of almost 700,000 users, the site
has issued a statement claiming it 'never met to upset anyone'.
During
one week in 2012, the social media giant edited feeds to highlight
either positive or negative items, and then monitored responses.
The
site has since apologized for the way the paper described the research,
and any anxiety that was caused, adding, 'the research benefits of the
paper may not have justified all of this.' |
| Following reports Facebook |
During one week in 2012, Facebook manipulated feeds of just over 689,000 users to highlight either positive or negative items, and then monitored responses over the course of a random week. The site has since apologized for the way the paper described the research, and any anxiety that was caused.
The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people who use our product,' said Facebook data scientist Adam D. I. Kramer.
‘We
felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing
friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left
out.
‘At
the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity
might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook. We didn't clearly state
our motivations in the paper.
'Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you that our goal was never to upset anyone.'
During the experiment, Facebook prioritized content in News Feeds, based on whether there was an emotional word in the post.
Tests affected around 0.04 per cent of users - or 1 in 2500 - for a week, in early 2012.
According to Kramer, nobody's posts were 'hidden,' they just didn't show up on some feeds.
'Those posts were always visible on friends' timelines, and could have shown up on later News Feed loads.'
It found that negative posts elicited a
swell of positive responses, but also that a reduction in positive news
led to more negative posts, according to the results of a study
published in PNAS Journal.
Facebook data scientist Adam D. I. Kramer issued
a statement over the weekend (pictured). He said: 'The reason we did
this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook.
Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you our
goal was never to upset anyone'
‘When
positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts
and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the
opposite pattern occurred,’ said the researchers.
‘These
results show that emotions expressed by others on Facebook
influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for
massive-scale contagion via social networks.’
Of the millions of posts analyses, 4 million were found to be positive and 1.8million were determined to be negative.
The
findings led the team to close that ‘in-person interaction and
nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion.’
This
experiment was limited to users who viewed Facebook in English, but it
is not known across which geographic boundaries.
'At
the end of the day, the real impact on people in the experiment was
the minimal amount to statistically detect it - the result was that
people produced an average of one fewer emotional word, per thousand
words, over the following week,' continued Kramer.
'I
can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my coauthors
and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and
any anxiety it caused.
'In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.'
Commenting
on the reports, Brett Dixon, director of the digital marketing agency
DPOM, said: 'Despite Facebook's insistence this was merely an academic
experiment, it sails perilously close to the illegal world of subliminal
advertising.
'There's a reason this insidious form of manipulation is banned - it is an abuse of people's freedom to choose.
'But let's keep some perspective. This was a research project, not the birth of some social media thought police.'
