[mullingitover]

> You can certainly question whether it is fair to expect users signing up for a service like Facebook's to read and understand user agreements containing dozens of pages of dense legalese, and which includes a clause consenting to the kind of research under discussion.

This apparently needs a correction: Facebook flat-out did not obtain anything resembling informed consent from their subjects. They added the 'research' blurb four months after they experimented on their users.[1]

No amount of reading the ToS would've informed you that you were a research subject.

The thing everyone seems to be missing is a discussion about what Facebook believes it can do within the parameters of its ToS. I'd love to hear someone from Facebook explain what they believe they can do, ethically and legally, and what would be crossing a bright red line.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/30/facebook-...