Out of context: Reply #42
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...Cornell’s story identifies the Army Research Office—an agency within the U.S. Army that funds basic research in the military’s interest—as one of the funders of the experiment [FB Mood Experiment].
http://www.theatlantic.com/techn…
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"As mentioned above, the research seems to have been carried out under Facebook’s extensive terms of service. The company’s current data use policy, which governs exactly how it may use users’ data, runs to more than 9,000 words. Does that constitute “language that is reasonably understandable”?
The APA has further guidelines for so-called “deceptive research” like this, where the real purpose of the research can’t be made available to participants during research. The last of these guidelines is:
Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data.
At the end of the experiment, did Facebook tell the user-subjects that their News Feeds had been altered for the sake of research? If so, the study never mentions it."