iamchairs t1_isczj4y wrote
Reply to comment by FPOWorld in Meta’s VR Headset Harvests Personal Data Right Off Your Face - Cameras inside the device that track eye and face movements can make an avatar’s expressions more realistic, but they raise new privacy questions. by speckz
Secret psychological experiments... You mean AB tests?
> one of the greatest crimes of my lifetime
I was going to say you must be young then but even then that doesn't make sense given everything that has happened since then... You sure you got the right scandal?
FPOWorld t1_isd0ql2 wrote
No, I mean where they did an experiment to manipulate users’ emotions: https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users
Stealing a US presidential election that led to the outlawing of abortion, nationwide voter suppression, and the community spread of Covid and a million dead Americans is right up there with anything I can think of.
iamchairs t1_isd2855 wrote
Yeah so this is called an AB test. These are happening all the time. Even here on Reddit did you know your version of Reddit may be slightly different than everyone else's? It's to test to see what a tweak to the system (UI or Feed) has on your behavior. In the article you linked, the article says Facebook was tweaking the percentage of positive/negative sentiment items it let through to your feed.
Yes through the Facebook platform Trump was able to get elected when maybe he wouldn't have otherwise. But the world is too complicated to say "everything happened because of X and only X". What about the following 4 years when the republicans blocked 2 impeachments? What about all of the existing levers used by those in power? Facebook was the shiny new lever. A big one- I'm not downplaying the significance- but one of many.
FPOWorld t1_isd33r1 wrote
Do you work for Facebook?
I’m well aware of what A/B testing is, as I mentioned, I’m a computer engineer. Why did they apologize for an A/B test, which as you know is almost an industry standard practice? Finding which widget gets the most clicks is an A/B test, not inflicting sadness on users as part of a psy op.
Sure this was not the only factor, but it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t a critical one. It’s especially egregious as it was done in the process of committing a crime that FB covered up. They deserve 0 trust.
iamchairs t1_isd4u7y wrote
Because they thought it was the best way to address it most likely. Schrep says in that article that they should have used a different method to conduct the same research, not that the research itself was wrong.
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