Facebook’s emotional manipulation study was unethical and socially irresponsible because it covertly meddled in people’s social lives with consequences that were likely to have significant negative effects, according to local experts.
The world’s largest social networking site sparked outrage after releasing a study revealing it secretly manipulated the newsfeeds of some 689,000 people to study “emotional contagion”.
People who viewed Facebook in English were qualified for selection into the experiment.
The study found that when positive content was reduced, people subsequently produced more negative posts. The opposite pattern occurred when negative content was reduced.
Health, academic and research psychologist Christian Borg Xuereb explained that emotional abuse is often minimised or overlooked.
“Emotional abuse includes verbal abuse such as yelling, name-calling, blaming, and shaming. However, controlling behaviour also falls under emotional abuse.”
Through this experiment, Dr Borg Xuereb explained, the people behind Facebook wanted to analyse if they were able to manipulate human emotions without the need for actual physical human interaction – and in simple terms, they succeeded.
There was already a body of research surrounding this topic, which was never explored in the media, he pointed out.
However, since this study was conducted on one of the largest social media available, it spread like wildfire.
Additionally, in studies that adopted a “deceptive” design, participants should be informed of this deception as early as possible, preferably not later than the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data.
However, Dr Borg Xuereb added, there was no mention of this in the actual study.
“The study contravened several research ethics principles. The authors of the study infringed the autonomy and dignity of Facebook members by interfering with personal decision-making as to the posts that people wished to make and, most importantly, by failing to gain valid informed consent from the participants.
“Informed consent is a core principle in modern human research ethics.
“In this study, the researchers took advantage of the fine print in Facebook’s data usage policy to legally conduct the study without obtaining informed consent.”
Alexiei Dingli, an associate professor at the Department of Artificial Intelligence, agreed that the study was highly unethical if the person’s consent was not sought beforehand.
“What if we can fuel bad sentiment on to people? It could lead to problems and even revolutions, as we’ve seen with the Arab Spring.
“We don’t know the consequences of this experiment. Imagine I’m mentally unstable. What if positive expressions were reduced from my timeline and I become more negative? Can this lead to violent reactions from my end?”
Prof. Dingli believed this experiment was an eye opener above anything else.
“Should we trust these corporations with our data? What is the EU doing about it?
“These corporations probably know us better than our partners. They know what we like, what we dislike. They know how aggressive we are. They know our dreams and aspirations.
“What if they can use this information against us? They can very easily manipulate us, not just individuals but groups of people.”