But why if it's done for science it's unethical, but when done by news stations, politicians, advertising agencies, motivational speakers, salesmen, etc. it's suddenly ok?
> when done by news stations, politicians, advertising agencies, motivational speakers, salesmen
Each of those are cleary identified.
If Facebook wants to put a little icon next to each "experimental study" status update which disclosed the party that funded the study, it would be different.
Even in "science", some studies are funded and others are not.
Are you even serious? Stating that mass media manipulation is overt and identifiable... The HN stopped to be self-correcting if one happens to hate Facebook, Google or LinkedIn.(not that I like them personally)
Any ad, political speech, sales pitch, pr/journalism etc. that you see today is identified by a named author/publisher/vendor byline. Assessment of possible manipulation is left as an exercise for the viewer, who can decide whether to ignore the communication.
There are any number of technical means by which:
(a) opt-in permission could be requested in advance of a study
(b) opt-out option could be advertised in advance of a study
(c) start and end dates of non-optional study could be disclosed
This is about CHOICE of participation, not the NATURE of the study.
"Who can decide whether to ignore the communication"
Wow... Not understanding basic theories of communication and human irrationality that doesn't allow lots of data to be processed and accepted without critical thought.
"opt-in permission could be requested in advance of a study"
Wow... Not understanding basic theories of psychological and sociological studies that state subjects should not be informed about the study or their behavior will change.
Standard rules of ethics for experiments on human subjects say that (with a few exceptions) subjects should always be informed about the study. If that changes the subjects' behavior such that the study is no longer valid, it's the researcher's obligation to come up with a better design that works in the face of informed consent, or to give up and study something easier.
It's been fairly well established that "I wanted to learn something" isn't an adequate excuse for doing things to people without informing them or receiving their consent.
Before you talk about peoples' "clueless 'ethics'", you might want to read the professional standards of the field, for example the American Psychological Association's Ethics Code. The section on "informed consent to research" is here: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=11#802
Users of Facebook see it as a neutral platform for communicating with people they know. Consumers of the things you listed know it's top-down messaging coming from people they don't know or necessarily trust.
So, there is a difference. It's still a complex question, though -- is filtering or prioritizing based on emotional sentiment really different from what they are already doing with inserting ads and such?
I see it this way: they did a study, so it's fair.
Were they to filter posts by emotional sentiment as a part of their normal operations, I'd find it unethical, or at least something I might not want. But I'm totally fine with them subjecting users (including myself) to random research studies, as those are temporary situations, and with Facebook's data sets, they can have great benefits for humanity.
Perhaps Facebook should provide an opt-in option to for user to be a subject of various sociological experiments at unspecified times. I'd happily select it.
