Anger Builds over Facebook Manipulation Study Abroad

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Facebook News Feeds has sparked among users who are criticizing the study abroad ethics behind the experiment, which was conducted by Facebook and many Universities of Australia, Germany, Sweden, USA i.e.

Researchers tweaked the feeds of 689,003 users to show a disproportionate number of positive or negative statuses for one week in January 2012. They found that the emotions of others on your News Feed can affect your mood, and published the results in journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). However, they did not inform users that they were manipulating News Feeds, and many questioned the study's abroad ethics.

Facebook legally is allowed to do this. As soon as users sign up for the social network, they agree to give up their data for analysis, testing and research. In this case, however, it is not the research people are criticizing it's the manipulation of data without users' prior consent or knowledge study.