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.

Recommended Videos

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]

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How to deactivate your Instagram account (or delete it)
A person holding a phone with the Instagram app open on it.

Oh, social media. Sometimes it’s just too much, folks.

If you’re finding yourself in a position where shutting down your Instagram account for a period of time sounds good, the people at Meta have made it pretty simple to deactivate it. It’s also quite easy to completely delete your Instagram, although we wouldn’t recommend this latter option if you plan on returning to the platform at a later date.

Read more
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Incogni: Recover your privacy and remove personal information from the internet
Incogni remove your personal data from brokers and more

Everything you do while online is tracked digitally. Often connected to your email address or an issued IP, trackers can easily identify financial details, sensitive information like your social security number, demographics, contact details, like a phone number or address, and much more. In many ways, this information is tied to a digital profile and then collated, recorded, and shared via data brokers. There are many ways this information can be scooped up and just as many ways, this information can be shared and connected back to you and your family. The unfortunate reality is that, for most of us, we no longer have any true privacy.

The problem is exacerbated even more if you regularly use social media, share content or images online, or engage in discussions on places like Reddit or community boards. It's also scary to think about because even though we know this information is being collected, we don't necessarily know how much is available, who has it, or even what that digital profile looks like.

Read more