Comment by gone35 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gone35 | Hacker News Reader

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Ethically, I don't see the problem.

The problem is, classically, lack of informed consent: the vast majority of Facebook users simply don't know they can be subjects of emotionally manipulative behavioral experiments at any time via UI tinkering, so it could be argued the TOS small-print waiver does not de facto ethically (nor legally) constitute informed consent proper.

An altogether different matter of course is whether you agree with the Belmont report principles in the first place, or the adequacy of principlism for social science research in general [1,2]. But as far as vanilla regulatory research ethics is concerned, this study should rightly raise several flags in any self-respecting IRB.

[1] http://www.uvu.edu/ethics/seac/Bulger-Principlism.pdf

[2] http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/85/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-001.pd...

> An altogether different matter of course is whether you agree with the Belmont report principles in the first place, or the adequacy of principlism for social science research in general

Absolutely. I've always found 'informed consent' to be a bizarre and ill-founded moral concept, with no place in consequentialist ethics, and this is an example of why: so, here is an experiment, of great importance to our understanding of social interactions & community design, where the intervention was just one of countless influences on the subjects and not a large one at that (what about the 'lack of informed consent' that is inherent with every form of advertising?), which did not harm them, and yet... this is somehow bad? Why? Uh, because 'informed consent!'

It all seems like so much angel-counting, when I read absurdities like "Near-Death-Experience Experiment: Ethical Concerns" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/nde_experiment_ethical_concern...

Very well said. If I proposed this study to the IRB where I work they would likely freak out. I think Facebook should be taking advantage of their data and conducting research. But they need to do this the way most respectable research organizations do and run all their studies through a credible IRB.

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