[rtpg]

I think the core idea here is that if FB decides to work in this space, they should follow similar codes of ethics as, say, your local psychologist.

Its' _absolutely not_ OK for any of this information to get anywhere near the "targetted ads" part of their service. Imagine if you could advertise your alcohol products directly to alcoholics!

It's not OK for people to run explicit "psychological manipulation" experiments without the user's consent and without very specific rules with regards to the danger to the users. There's a reason why you don't replicate the prison experiment.

Maybe FB is already doing this in context of their algorithmic feed improvements. In that case they should already be asking for user consent when running these experiments.

It's not even that hard! "We're trying new changes to feeds to help show you content that is more relevant to you/more positive/etc. Click here if you want to opt-in. See here for details"

They can do right here, and I bet enough people within FB would like to do things "right", but might simply not be informed enough.