After controversy, Facebook promises stricter scrutiny over research
Facebook is planning stricter scrutiny when conducting research. Facebook came under fire for a 2012 study that manipulated users' newsfeeds without their knowledge.
Facebook is planning stricter scrutiny when conducting research. Facebook came under fire for a 2012 study that manipulated users' newsfeeds without their knowledge.
Facebook Inc plans a stricter review of requests to access information on its 1.32 billion active users after a psychological experiment on unwitting users in 2012 created a furor on social media.
There will be a stricter review of requests for research, for internal work or academic purposes, that deals with personal content or specific groups of people, Chief聽Technology聽Officer聽Mike Schroepfer聽wrote.
He did not elaborate on the new guidelines.
Facebook said new engineers will be educated on the company's research practices during training.
Any academic research that Facebook undertakes will now be published on a single site.聽
A Facebook spokesman acknowledged in July that an experiment on nearly 700,000 users in 2012 had upset users and said the company would change the way it handled research.聽
In the study, Facebook experimented with the emotional states of users to prompt them to post either more positive or negative content on their news feeds.聽海角大神 reported that the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office launched an investigation to determine if Facebook broke data protection laws.聽
"Although this subject matter was important to research, we were unprepared for the reaction the paper received when it was published," Schroepfer wrote on Thursday.