Facebook manipulates 700,000 users’ emotions
Facebook secretly manipulated news feeds of 700,000 users in 2012
to study “emotional contagion.”
Facebook, Cornell University and the University of California at
San Francisco were in on the tactic together.
They wanted to see if the number of positive or negative words in
messages they received affected the content in their status updates. It did.
What a surprise!
"Emotional states can be transferred
to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same
emotions without their awareness," the study authors wrote.
It could have been worse. Facebook says it
has one billion active users. So it manipulated the minds of only 7% of them. Lucky us.
To read about this, click on
My thanks to 1970s BJ reporter Cathy Robinson Strong, who has lived in New Zealand for nearly four decades, for tipping me off about this outrage.
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