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by jamesbrownuhh 4366 days ago
Most of those are quite different things, and obviously so if you think about them.

"Do customers prefer the green button or the blue button" is harmless. Psychological testing is NOT harmless and NOT something that anyone with a website can or should do. That is medical research - and as such is strictly controlled precisely because of the real risks and genuine human cost that it can have if conducted inexpertly.
1 comments
akerl_ 4366 days ago
> "Do customers prefer the green button or the blue button" is harmless.

That is a psychological test.

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jamesbrownuhh 4366 days ago
Not one which is specifically designed to alter someone's emotional mental state. The difference is quite obvious, surely.
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zaroth 4366 days ago
Actually, no. You are putting the cart before the horse. What actually happened is that they tweaked the ranking algorithm, and then measured a minuscule effect in a particular scoring algorithm (in this case counting certain types of words used in future posts).

So the nature of the scoring algorithm (counting emotional words) used to measure the impact of a change makes deploying the A/B test suddenly unethical?

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vacri 4366 days ago
Most advertising is specifically designed to alter someone's emotional mental state, and plenty of that is in a negative direction. Would you also outlaw advertising? Why should advertising get a free pass and not well-controlled psych testing? What about signs warning you not to infringe on [random local law] under threat of penalty? They create a sense of oppression. Should they be forbidden?
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