Facebook concedes failings over feeling control study - ELOSTAN

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Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Facebook concedes failings over feeling control study

Facebook said it will change the way it does research, yet halted shy of apologizing for a questionable examination it led for this present year.
In June, the site was scrutinized for controlling the news bolsters of almost 700,000 clients without their assent.
The system said it was "ill-equipped" for the recoil it got.
"[We] have taken to heart the remarks and feedback. It is clear now that there are things we ought to have done any other way," Facebook said.
In an online journal, boss innovation officer Mike Schroepfer said the organization ought to have "considered other non-test approaches to do this exploration".
He included: "In discharging the study, we neglected to impart unmistakably why and how we did it."
The informal organization controlled the news food of clients over an one-week period in 2012 without their insight to oversee which passionate representations they were presented to. Study sparks furore The experiment was part of a study by Facebook and two US universities. The social network said at the time it was to gauge whether "exposure to emotions led people to change their own posting behaviours".
However, the company was widely criticised for manipulating material from people's personal lives in order to play with user emotions or make them sad.
In response on Thursday, Facebook said that it was introducing new rules for conducting research on users with clearer guidelines, better training for researchers and a stricter review process.
But, it did not state whether or not it would notify users - or seek their consent - before starting a study.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in London, which supports data privacy for individuals, said Facebook's comments were "a step in the right direction", but it hoped to hear more about how the social network intends to improve transparency.
"Organisations who want to process people's personal information without explicitly asking for their permission, for instance to carry out research, always need to proceed with caution," an ICO spokesman said.
Should Facebook apologise? IDC research analyst Jan van Vonno said it was Facebook's responsibility to notify users of any studies they were partaking in.
"They're going to continue that research and what they should do is make users aware of what they're doing and that's not really what they're doing right now," Mr van Vonno said.
An apology would be a sign of regret and they obviously don't regret any of their actions because they think it's for the benefit of their own platform."
It was still important for Facebook to study consumer behaviour so it could maximize the impact advertisers had on the platform, which remains a huge source of revenue for the company, Mr van Vonno added.
The company's mobile advertising revenue jumped 151% in the second quarter of this year from 2013 and accounted for more than 60% of its overall ad revenue.
Just this week, Facebook relaunched Atlas, an advertising platform it bought from Microsoft last year, to improve the effectiveness of its ads.

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