[kevingadd]

You're not alone, but I think you do yourself a disservice by underestimating the potential negative impact of an experiment designed for the purpose of manipulating a customer's emotions. There's no defensible business objective here, and furthermore, any business objective that relies on this kind of emotional manipulation is suspect.

Intentionally making a customer depressed is not something you fuck around with. It's incredibly dangerous, and doing it to a huge subset of your audience with no mechanisms to ensure you don't inflict real harm is utterly reckless and irresponsible.

The individual mechanisms and approach used here for the experiment are not, in and of themselves, objectionable. Many A/B tests are wholly defensible. The end goal and process are the problem here.

[amirmc]

> "... any business objective that relies on this kind of emotional manipulation is suspect."

So all modern day advertising then, that attempts to create a connection with the viewer/reader (as opposed to presenting bare facts).

I agree that there was a process problem from the point of view of a research study but had this just been an A/B test for engagement levels, we might never have known what Facebook did.