Privacy 2.0- legal, but is it ethical?

The window of the universe- Facebook's newsfeed. 

It seems like now-a-days I open my laptop to a sob fest. From grandparents dancing with one another on their billionth anniversary, to gay men getting married and a little girl greeting her father that's just returned home from overseas, Facebook has some ballsy emotional appeal going on, but did you know it's intentional?

Very few users would notice because let's face it, we all watch the dog videos so it's normal for others to pop up every so often. 

However, in January of 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users first saw when logging on to their page. 

Some of the Facebook users were shown happy and positive, uplifting posts and the others were shown what was analyzed as sadder than average posts. 

Once this trial run of emotion was over, analysts noticed that the manipulated users were more likely to post either positive or negative words on their own Facebook based on what they viewed. 

This experiment is legal and if you read into the actual terms of service provided by Facebook, they're allowed to use their data for "testing, data analysis and research." 

The question is whether or not it's ethical to intentionally manipulate someone's newsfeed to make them feel a certain way for an experiment.  

The reason for the study was to show whether or not emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, which leads to people experiencing the same emotions without their awareness. 

This shows that we don't need direct human interaction to achieve this emotional contagion. 

However, I'm not sure this study achieved this effectively anyway.

We already know that we don't need human interaction. Take books for an example. Specifically fictional books allow readers to experience feelings and emotions whether they've actually had firsthand experience with them or not. I believe this was proven a while ago by a study that was featured on NPR that I listened to. Unlike non-fiction, which may or may not have that effect on the reader, fiction allows people to experience the same level of emotion whether or not it's actually taking place. Good fiction tricks the brain into experiencing these emotions.

This is the same thing that is going on in the news programming, and that's troubling. 

News media features stories that are more sensational and negative because those garner higher ratings. They all do this. Depending on which news outlet you listen to, it slants more to their viewers  conservative viewpoint (Fox) and more liberal viewpoint (MSNBC) or CNN, who is just the whore of three who just wants ratings.

The end result being, we don't get an accurate view of the world around us, but a manipulated view that erodes our confidence in the world around us needlessly because it's all feared based. News outlets are just interested in numbers these days as opposed to objectivity.

Furthermore, the Facebook study was flawed in many ways. One being the analysis of different words.

Someone saying "I am not happy" is different from someone saying "I am not having a great day."

The software used to conduct this experiment would target the word "not" and define both sentences as a user being unhappy and not pleased. 

Susan Fiske, the Princeton University psychology professor who edited the study for publication said; "Ethically it's okay from a regulations perspective, but ethics are kind of social decisions[....] there's not an absolute answer but the level of outrage that appears to be happening suggests that maybe it shouldn't have been done and as I'm thinking about it, I'm a little creeped out too."

I have mixed feelings about this.

I never under any circumstance want my feed to be manipulated by some random dude for a study. 

I understand why so many are outraged about that aspect.

However, I believe this comes down to a personal choice.

I believe I have the choice to react to something or not. Whether it's put up there to intentionally make me sad or piss me off, I firmly believe it's my decision on how I continue my day. 

What my friend likes or their friend's friend, it somehow ends up on my feed. Whether it's put up for an experiment or ends up there from my grandma's second cousin liking something from four years ago, I have the discipline to chose the fate of my day. 

I would love to live in a world where I don't constantly doubt the information and the intentions behind it. 

For more information on the study, click here.