Skip to main content

Facebook to be investigated by UK regulator over its controversial psychology study

Although several days have passed since Facebook revealed it’d conducted a psychological experiment involving around 700,000 of its users without their knowledge, the controversy shows no sign of going away, with a UK regulator now looking into the social networking site’s actions.

Responsible for enforcing the UK’s Data Protection Act, the Information Commissioner’s Office is reportedly planning to question Facebook about the experiment, which it conducted back in 2012. It said it would also be in touch with its counterpart in the Irish government, as Facebook’s European base is located in Dublin.

The social networking site’s director of policy in Europe, Richard Allan, insisted Facebook’s week-long experiment was carried out with the “appropriate protections,” adding that it was ready to comply with the UK regulator’s investigation.

According to the Financial Times, the Information Commissioner’s Office is keen to learn if any UK citizens were subjects in Facebook’s experiment, and wants to know what safeguards were in place when it came to ensuring subject anonymity.

If its investigation finds the social networking giant to have infringed UK law, the regulator could demand the Silicon Valley-based company change its policies and hit it with a fine of up to $850,000.

The experiment, outlined in more detail here, involved tweaking the site’s News Feed algorithms for 690,000 users, affecting the kind of posts each person was shown.

Feeding people with news stories deemed positive or negative, the company aimed to discover how content affected a user’s emotions. As you might expect, researchers discovered that users subjected to a low number of positive posts tended to be less positive in their own posts, while those fed mostly with positive posts would be more upbeat in their online behavior.

With criticism of Facebook mounting, the study’s co-author, Adam Kramer, went online over the weekend to offer more details about the study, claiming it was conducted because “we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product,” while at the same time apologizing for “any anxiety it caused.”

It remains to be seen whether any US regulators, such as the Federal Trade Commission, decide to launch a similar investigation to the UK’s.

[Via Financial Times / WSJ]

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Instagram whacked with massive fine over child privacy
Instagram app icon.

Instagram has been fined 405 million euros (about $403 million) for violating the European Union’s privacy-focused General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The penalty was handed down by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) over Instagram’s handling of children’s privacy settings on the app.

Read more
Snapchat may owe you money just for using filters — here’s how to get paid
A person using Snapchat on an iPhone.

Snapchat is currently in a bit of hot water with the state of Illinois following a class-action lawsuit that alleges that the company violated the privacy rights of Illinois app users. While the suit is still ongoing, parent company Snap Inc. could owe residents up to $35 million. That number is subject to change as the lawsuit continues toward its final approval, which is scheduled for November, according to NBC Chicago.

Although it's never a good thing when a tech company violates the rights of its userbase, the silver lining here is that Snapchat users could be getting a check in the mail as long as they fill out the required forms.
What rights did Snapchat violate?

Read more
Breaking down the Twitter whistleblower allegations and how it affects the Musk takeover
Jack Dorsey sits in front of a Twitter logo.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post published an extensive report about a Twitter whistleblower who alleges that the social media company's executives have misled, well, just about everyone (but especially federal regulators and Twitter's own board of directors), about its own security issues. The whistleblower complaint details quite a few alleged serious problems at Twitter, including security issues and a lack of resources to fully address disinformation. Notably, the complaint also mentions Twitter's spam and bot issues. If you've been following along with the Elon Musk Twitter takeover saga, you know that ascertaining the true number of bots on the bird app has been a particular roadblock for Twitter's acquisition.

In July, the complaint was filed with two agencies (the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as the Department of Justice. And the complaint wasn't filed by just anybody. The whistleblower was none other than Twitter's former head of security, Peiter Zatko. Zatko is also a well-respected hacker himself, also known as "Mudge."

Read more