Not a single point in that response directly addresses why there was no informed consent in the study. There are reasons why research goes under ethical review before it is conducted, and this is certainly going to be a tough lesson for Facebook.
Experimenters have tell fibs in order to discover the truth about your behavior: the only way to prevent you from thinking of the word "elephant" is say the experiment is about cats. This is generally considered OK, provided that you won't be upset when you find out what was really going on.
And, without the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to see why people would get upset about this experiment. I reckon Facebook users are more upset by the truth, that their "personal" feelings are so influenced by trivial aspects of their environment, than by the way Facebook demonstrated it. The truth sometimes hurts, but science isn't to blame.
That's not quite right; Even in circumstances where participants are mislead for other purposes, they are still informed that they are taking part in an experiment.
The issue here is that Facebook conducted behavioural experiments on participants whom were not informed that they were part of a study. It is unethical. Whilst the outcomes are tame for those involved, the shear number of those involved and Facebook's influence and presence in everyday life makes it all the more alarming that they attempted it in the first place.
Those people generally get to decide for themselves if they even want to be part of the experiment. They also have the right to opt-out at any given time during the experiment. Neither of those happened here.
The line I quoted implies that the OP thinks that the research did not go under ethical review because if it had they would have required informed consent. But it did and they did not.
I'm fairly sure they will have some discussion about this there.
Look, mistakes were made. These could have been addressed with a suitable apology. Instead you get this bs and hiding being 'but it was reviewed' when clearly there is a disconnect between the way this study is perceived by the subjects and the people that conducted it and those that reviewed it.
Maybe it is that facebook is not exactly associated with ethical conduct, maybe it is that the review boards were asleep at the switch, maybe it is that in a corporate context ethics is so far removed from the stated goals that such discussions are meaningless.
But for all the review that took place and all the points in time at which this study could have been halted the fact that nobody steps up and says: "we were wrong to do this" tells you more than enough about the state of ethics at facebook.
And I'm not at all surprised, there is a good reason I don't have an account there. But I'm still surprised at how bad they are handling the fall-out from this. They're essentially making it worse, not better.
All I was doing was correcting the OP. You can't ask why it was approved if you think it wasn't. The reason why Facebook isn't apologizing is because they do this kind of research all the time in the form of A/B tests. It opens a can of worms for them to suggest they did something wrong.
It appears I did make a mistake, the university did conduct an ethics review.
Although, I find that is all the more concerning, since you would hope that the university in question would have more ethical clout than an corporation.
I believe the study was highly unethical. However, in many studies participants have no idea what's being studied about them. The participant content angle seems less ominous than the rest of it, and might be detracting from discussing more serious ethical implications that come from optimizing user engagement and it's derivative forms.
Comments
Not a single point in that response directly addresses why there was no informed consent in the study. There are reasons why research goes under ethical review before it is conducted, and this is certainly going to be a tough lesson for Facebook.
Experimenters have tell fibs in order to discover the truth about your behavior: the only way to prevent you from thinking of the word "elephant" is say the experiment is about cats. This is generally considered OK, provided that you won't be upset when you find out what was really going on.
And, without the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to see why people would get upset about this experiment. I reckon Facebook users are more upset by the truth, that their "personal" feelings are so influenced by trivial aspects of their environment, than by the way Facebook demonstrated it. The truth sometimes hurts, but science isn't to blame.
That's not quite right; Even in circumstances where participants are mislead for other purposes, they are still informed that they are taking part in an experiment.
The issue here is that Facebook conducted behavioural experiments on participants whom were not informed that they were part of a study. It is unethical. Whilst the outcomes are tame for those involved, the shear number of those involved and Facebook's influence and presence in everyday life makes it all the more alarming that they attempted it in the first place.
Those people generally get to decide for themselves if they even want to be part of the experiment. They also have the right to opt-out at any given time during the experiment. Neither of those happened here.
The study was approved by an ethical review board.
The parent is talking about subject consent, not board approval. These are two vastly different things.
Did you miss that line?
Do you understand the word 'consent'?
The line I quoted implies that the OP thinks that the research did not go under ethical review because if it had they would have required informed consent. But it did and they did not.
Ethical review by facebook is not ethical review.
That's like asking a serial killer about his opinion of murder.
It was also reviewed by a Cornell IRB.
I'm fairly sure they will have some discussion about this there.
Look, mistakes were made. These could have been addressed with a suitable apology. Instead you get this bs and hiding being 'but it was reviewed' when clearly there is a disconnect between the way this study is perceived by the subjects and the people that conducted it and those that reviewed it.
Maybe it is that facebook is not exactly associated with ethical conduct, maybe it is that the review boards were asleep at the switch, maybe it is that in a corporate context ethics is so far removed from the stated goals that such discussions are meaningless.
But for all the review that took place and all the points in time at which this study could have been halted the fact that nobody steps up and says: "we were wrong to do this" tells you more than enough about the state of ethics at facebook.
And I'm not at all surprised, there is a good reason I don't have an account there. But I'm still surprised at how bad they are handling the fall-out from this. They're essentially making it worse, not better.
Do you work for facebook?
All I was doing was correcting the OP. You can't ask why it was approved if you think it wasn't. The reason why Facebook isn't apologizing is because they do this kind of research all the time in the form of A/B tests. It opens a can of worms for them to suggest they did something wrong.
It appears I did make a mistake, the university did conduct an ethics review.
Although, I find that is all the more concerning, since you would hope that the university in question would have more ethical clout than an corporation.
I believe the study was highly unethical. However, in many studies participants have no idea what's being studied about them. The participant content angle seems less ominous than the rest of it, and might be detracting from discussing more serious ethical implications that come from optimizing user engagement and it's derivative forms.