Facebook Gives Apology After Netizens Found Out the Conducted Social Experiment

A total of 700,000 users of a famous social networking site Facebook, were outraged and spoke out on privacy invasion of a certain social experiment. The experiment gives the unknowing users positive or negative posts in their newsfeeds and observes if they follow the same mood change and pattern. The Facebook data scientists wanted to see if these emotional states are actually contagious and can be manipulated even over the internet. Trying to justify this mood study, Facebook finally apologizes.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg admitted that the experiment was a part of ongoing research companies to test different products and that the terms were “poorly communicated”, trying to lessen the users’ anger, according to the Wall Street Journal report. “And for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you,” Sandberg said while in a meeting in New Delhi with a group of small businesses.

Although the study was considered carefully before it was conducted with the mass, Adam Kramer, one of the data scientists at Facebook wasted no time before actually letting the Facebook community know about the research, saying that it probably wasn’t worth the annoyance and anger of Facebook users in hindsight. According to him, the experiment in question was conducted in early 2012 and they have been working on improving their internal review practices.

The apology did not, however, doesn’t actually seem to indicate that the Facebook staff and the data scientists will put a stop on this continuous experiments of its enormous user base. It has been made understood though, that most users would rather be included in the project with them knowing than have the terms hidden from then in the future.

Facebook COO stated in an interview, “We take privacy and security at Facebook really seriously because that is something that allows people to share opinions and emotions.”

Other netizens expressed their continued disapproval on forum discussions that Facebook isn’t actually sorry for conducting the experiment but sorry for letting their secret leaked out to the public.