Facebook to face UK probe over user study
BRITAIN’S data protection commissioner yesterday announced it would investigate Facebook over whether it had broken the law by conducting a controversial psychological experiment in 2012 on nearly 700,000 users without their consent.
Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg yesterday apologised for “communicating really badly” about the experiment, which adjusted users’ news feeds to determine the emotional impact of being exposed to more positive or negative stories.
The Information Commissioner’s office said it would question Facebook over the study, according to the Financial Times.
The experiment raised ethical concerns about the degree to which social networking sites could influence users’ behaviour. However, experts said this was not unusual.
Suzy Moat, assistant professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School said: “It’s interesting that there’s such outrage about this, but not about the experiments which many online businesses run on all of us – possibly because a lot of people simply don’t realise that they’re happening.”