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by erik_seaberg 1892 days ago
When a movie makes the audience sad, it wins Oscars, we don't censor it. Why should the rules be different for Facebook?
2 comments

That is a banal comparison. When a film makes you sad, you are aware of what is going on. If you are unusually sensitive to these types of emotions, you can read about the film ahead of time to see if you might want to avoid it.
Do you typically go read a synopsis of the entire plot of a film, including any surprise developments, before watching it?
No?
Ok. Then what you’re saying doesn’t make sense.
Why?
Because films’ promotions may deliberately conceal information about tragic events in the story to achieve maximum impact and nobody thinks that is unethical.
It's hard to get a lot of positive reinforcement by interacting with like-minded others at scale through a movie. Facebook's original stated intent was to study contagion of emotion, which seems to me to suggest a multiplayer, interactive effect.