Facebook loves nothing more than trolling you by completely overhauling its news feed and making its privacy settings into an insane maze, but this time, they’ve taken it a step further, by making its users into guinea pigs for an experiment on social media and emotional states.
It seems that Facebook decided to test the theory that good and bad moods can be spread over social networks by viruses, and that they did so by manipulating the content that appeared on the news feeds of certain selected users.
The experiment was conducted two years ago, in 2012, and almost 700,000 Facebook users were unwitting participants.
Researchers skewed the data so that some users were presented with posts showing happy and positive words, while some were shown posts that contained sad and angry content.
Facebook then monitored the users’ posts for the next week, and found that users in the second group were more prone to posting negative status updates themselves.
Admittedly, this does not sound like a perfect system. A new baby post is hypothetically a “happy” occasion, but when it comes from a stupid dickhead you knew in high school who should
never have been allowed to breed, it can inspire feelings of rage.
Likewise, the sad news that a very hot person you know is now “single” can be good, if you’ve always wanted to hit that like the fist of angry god. But we’re getting away from the point here.
Under Facebook’s terms of service, the experiment was legal. When signing up, users agree that their information can be used for “data analysis, testing [and] research.”
Ethically, the implications are a bit murkier. On the one hand, Facebook uses algorithms to manipulate your news feed all the time anyway, showing you things and people it thinks you will like.
On the other, it’s pretty damn creepy to know that social networks can toy with your emotions so easily,and to ponder the possible future implications of that. Feelings, how the fuck do they work?
Photo: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images
