After secretly experimenting with the moods of 700,000 users, Facebook faces a government probe in the U.K., the Financial Times reports.
Led by the U.K.’s Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), a government organization that promotes “data privacy for individuals,” the investigation was apparently prompted by “widespread outrage” over Facebook’s mood experiment. VentureBeat has reached out to Facebook and the ICO for comment on the matter.
Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer tells VentureBeat that the research was intended to "investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out." As we reported on Sunday, Kramer said Facebook also wanted to know about user's reactions to negative content. "We were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook," Kramer told us.
According to FT, an ICO regulator said the organization “would also be in contact with the Irish data protection body, because Facebook has its European headquarters in Dublin. More, from FT:
A spokesperson for the ICO said it was too early to tell exactly what part of the law Facebook may have infringed. The regulator looks at how much personal data are used and whether users have given their consent.
Via: Business Insider.
Facebook is the world's largest social network, with over 1.15 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 w... read more »
