The Facebook’s creepy experiment on people’s emotions seems to have caused a never ending stir around the globe. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), is currently in Delhi, India and giving explanations on a daily basis about this experiment that has diluted the social media giant’s image worldwide. In a program on Bloomberg, Rosalind Chin, an expert at the channel said that the experiment was conducted years ago but it’s causing a huge disturbance for Facebook these days and this will continue in the coming days.
“They conducted this experiment, actually back in January 2012, so it was a couple of years ago, and what they did was, they activated an algorithm, that would change the number of more positive or more negative feeds that you saw on your Facebook so….and then they would look at the comments that these users made to see whether they had reacted more negativity or more positively,” said Chin.
Sandberg made a public apology in a statement and said that the experiment was the process of testing the products that companies normally do. Sandberg admitted that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) communicated poorly. She said that Facebook never meant to upset its users.
Experts at Bloomberg said that Sandberg didn’t actually apologize for the experiment but she apologized for the poor communication done by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). They also said that the basic reason behind the stir and anger by the Facebook users on this experiment in the sensitivity of the domain and privacy issues.
An expert said that this issue is with a lot of companies because they need to analyze the data, user emotions and trends in order to make money. The credit card companies, health companies and other social media giants collect users data frequently to craft the best possible targeting strategies for their business. But she also said that what Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) did was a little bit beyond the red line because its purely dealing with the user’s emotions.
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