Let’s try something different this week.
I’m going to write the beginning of this column two different ways. Here’s the first:
Facebook and OkCupid, the social network and the dating site, are doing experiments on their users in sneaky ways and they must be stopped. Manipulating emotions and being less than straightforward with users is just wrong. It’s outrageous and unethical, a total fiasco, and I’m going to give you 10 reasons you should be furious that it’s happening.
Got that? All right, here’s the second way this column could start:
Much has been made of so-called experiments that the social network Facebook and the dating website OkCupid have been doing on their users, manipulating news feeds or presenting inaccurate data in order to gauge a reaction. But you know what? Lots of websites do this every day; it’s to be expected on the Internet, especially on social websites where you are the end product. So you should stop worrying and here’s 10 reasons why.
Which of those introductions would make you more likely to keep reading the rest of this column? (If you stopped reading already you don’t have to answer the question.)
Congratulations! You’ve just participated in an informal journalism study, an experiment that could help shape the future of this publication’s technology coverage.
I’m sorry, what? You don’t remember agreeing to be part of an experiment for the good of science and discovery? Well, you did pick up this newspaper or click on a link to read this article, correct? Your actions suggest that you are fine with entering an agreement between the author of this piece (that would be me) and the media consumer (that’s you) in which content is provided to be consumed. Perhaps we might have mentioned that we are also studying your reading habits and using the data to shape content to better sell you subscriptions and keep you on our website. We could have told you that. But, in all fairness, you really didn’t ask.
All right, the experiment is over.
How did that make you feel? Are you mad at me? Can we still be friends? Would it help if I told you I was making a lot of that up? No? Sorry.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling with whether I feel betrayed or completely all right with what some are calling an unethical betrayal of my fellow Internet users by the two companies I mentioned earlier, Facebook and OkCupid. In the case of Facebook, it was an experiment in 2012 on nearly 700,000 users. The company tweaked its algorithm for what kinds of posts it showed to them. Facebook wanted to see if it could alter their emotional state and cause them to put up more negative or positive posts themselves.
The experiment didn’t come to light until March when Facebook published its research in a science journal and, a few months later, it gained traction on the social network itself as a full-blown fiasco. You get the sense that Facebook was trying to show that it cares about its users’ emotions, but the effort backfired. It was like watching a giant robot try unsuccessfully to hug a fragile kitten.
Last week, OkCupid, a company that never saw an opportunity for publicity it didn’t like, said it too has been running mind games in a blog post from one of the founders subtly titled “We Experiment On Human Beings!” OkCupid’s experiments involved manipulating compatibility scores for potential daters, hiding photos and other information in dating profiles and more.
Both companies are likely within their rights to do what they did since most users never take the time to read or understand the legalese-thick Terms of Service they agree to when signing up.
Matthew McGlone, faculty researcher with the Center for Identity at The University of Texas at Austin, has been following both stories and says that even if Facebook and OkCupid users get upset about these experiments, the furor is not likely to last or to affect either site’s growth.
“Despite the hue and cry about the Facebook experiments in the blogosphere and media, there’s no evidence that the bad press has had an appreciable negative impact on (Facebook or OkCupid’s) user base,” McGlone said. He thinks it might even work out favorably for both companies as proof that they know how to get to users in new, more insidious ways. “I strongly suspect that the companies predicted these outcomes — a flurry of bad press, a negligible dent in membership and great interest among stakeholders who use these platforms to push products.”
Yikes! McGlone went on to say that to companies such as OkCupid, signing up for online services without studying the Terms of Service makes most of us willing participants. And these companies are hungry for user data, continually seeking ways to improve what they do to make their services even more addictive and advertiser-friendly.
Short of severing your Internet connection and giving every Internet service the boot, McGlone says there are a few ways to reduce the risk of being experimented on. Most “research,” he says, involves using your prior online behavior to feed you “behavioral advertising.”
“Obviously, companies must be able to record and store one’s online browsing habits to conduct this sort of research. People can choose privacy settings in Google and other sites that limit (if not entirely eliminate) the ability of behavioral advertising algorithms to collect their personal data,” McGlone said.
You can also stick to using search engines that enable no-tracking privacy policies by default. That means more obscure search engines such as DuckDuckGo.com, not so much Google and Bing, though there are Web extensions and other tools that can make mainstream search engines more privacy-friendly.
Whether you think Web experiments are evil or just a trade-off for all the services we get online for free, you should at least be aware that they’re happening. Remember, the price you’re really paying for free Facebook and dating services is your personal information, attention and all the content you produce for them in the way of photos, pithy posts and clicks.
Now, if you have a few minutes, I have several exciting endings for this column I’d like to run by you.
Don’t worry, it’s just an innocent little experiment.
