Herding the Herd

Psycho-social Experiments This week I learned that Facebook admitted it will use data gathered when you use the new emojis to alter your News Feed and learn more about what you like. The article, which appeared in the Minds Journal, adds this, “Though Facebook often disputes suspicions its updates are psycho-social experiments, the platform’s notorious 2014 study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proved users can’t be confident they aren’t. Facebook users became unwitting social media lab rats when data scientists manipulated the news feeds of some 700,000 people to study emotional contagion. The newest emojis, ...