[Throwaway0812]

Isn't everything in the media designed to manipulate our emotions? I mean, those commercials to sponsor children in Africa, trying to make you feel guilty, and how for just the price of your morning coffee you can keep Timmy off the streets, and eating well?

You can argue FB relies on user content, but then I can compare that to reality TV shows, and how they'll take real-life footage, and manipulate it to trigger emotions.

For example, American Idol will paint a picture of someone struggling their whole life, and how this is their one opportunity for success after being fired from McDonalds and having their cat pass away. Then just as you're feeling sorry, they light up the stage, and you rejoice. Meanwhile, they forgot to tell you that person had professional training twice a week for the past 10 years, they won two other singing competitions earlier in the year, and live in a beautiful neighborhood, but that doesn't play into the emotions they want you to feel, and that doesn't get you to watch next week.

Or a show like Survivor, and how they'll take footage, and try to fabricate relationships and drama out of thin air. This way you become angry towards one character that'll be in the finale, and are likely to tune in to ensure they don't win.

Why can't Facebook do the same? Why can't they analyze and manipulate user emotions to increase business?

[cscurmudgeon]

Watching a show and getting emotional is something that we do of our own will.

In my lab, a PhD student had to get permission from the IRB to conduct a simple study that looked at how good people were at critical thinking. There are reasons why this is regulated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board

[Throwaway0812]

We do at our own will? So if I'm watching a movie and everyone in the theater is in tears, it has nothing to do with the director trying to create a sense of emotion and sadness, but it was just our own choice?

I'd think Facebook has even less control, and more difficultly predicting emotions. For example, if Facebook displays a post about Jane having a bad day and losing her job, that's bad news. However, it's difficult to determine how I'll react. It might be comforting for me to know someone else is having a bad day, it might make me angry that Jane lost her job, when I lost my job at the same business the week prior, it might make me happy because Jane is always bragging about her job, and I no longer have to hear about it.

When it comes to a movie, I think there's a lot more control since you write the script and characters from start to finish. Every person in the audience has the same relationship with those characters, and knows them for their entirety. You also have fine grain control over the visuals, combined with carefully selected music. As I said earlier, all of this can lead to a room full of people leaving the theater in tears, so I don't see the difference.

Or, when you say we do at our own will, you mean we make the choice to visit the theater in the first place? That would be no different than making the choice to visit Facebook. If anything, you should be questioning every advertising campaign in existence. They're carefully crafted to evoke a certain emotion, and they work specifically because they can manipulate people. At the same time, people have no choice to view them, they're constantly exposed to these manipulations just by walking outdoors or visiting the store to buy groceries.

[cscurmudgeon]

Going to the theater is our choice. We want our emotions to be changed when we go to a movie. In Facebook, I want the raw feed from my friends, not some emotionally filtered feed. I don't want to get into a debate on free will. Do you think laws on human experimentation should be removed?

You argument is basically a milder analog of "Humans die from all kinds of causes so let us let murderers walk free."

[Throwaway0812]

Right, you want the raw feed, but it's up to Facebook whether or not to provide it, and it's up to you whether or not to consume it.

This is no different than a television series like I mentioned earlier. You can argue you want the raw footage from a reality television show, and not the heavily edited version designed to manipulate your emotions, but that's not your choice.

[cscurmudgeon]

Facebook promises the raw feed, but supplies something else. Nowhere in their contract they say they do emotional filtering.

[Throwaway0812]

Where does it say they provide the raw feed? Everywhere I look in the Facebook help, terms and privacy policy it mentions how they use algorithms to determine what stories appear, and how they use information provided by users to pick stories. They also mention using user information for internal testing and analysis.

They seem to be following those terms, they were choosing positive and negative stories for feeds, and then analyzing the data to see if users then posted more positive or negative posts in return.

1. '...we may make friend suggestions, pick stories for your News Feed, or suggest people to tag in photos...'

2. 'The News Feed algorithm uses several factors to determine top stories...'

3. 'How we use the information we receive... for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.'