Facebook’s Psychology Experiment Raises Privacy Concerns

News broke recently that Facebook had manipulated 690,000 users’ Facebook experiences in order to see if a more positive news feed affected user behavior. The experiment only affected news feeds, and in the end found that emotion is contagious: those exposed to more positive posts posted more positive material, and vice versa. What’s concerning, though, is that Facebook – on a whim – decided it would use its users as psychological subjects, which goes against several different types of ethics. It plays into the narrative that is spouted more and more: Internet companies do not have users’ best interests at heart, and are in it for their own financial gain. Whether users will continue to trust Facebook in the same way that they once did a few years ago seems unlikely.