A former Facebook employee has alleged that the social media giant is always experimenting on its users.
Andrew Ledvina, who was on Facebook’s Data Science team from February 2012 to July 2013, said the team operated with seemingly little supervision.
“There’s no review process, per se. Anyone on that team could run a test,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
“They’re always trying to alter people’s behavior.”
The comments came after Facebook was found to have conducted a manipulative study aimed at verifying that the network was capable of triggering emotional contagion.
The study by the social network has prompted angry responses among users. Carried out during the period of a week in 2012, it involved doctoring what people would receive in their newsfeeds.
It then gauged if people would go on posting positive or negative statuses based on the negativity or positivity of the content they would receive through their newsfeeds.
It found out that the emotional nature of the content in the newsfeeds worked to affect the subjects’ moods.
“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness,” the study authors wrote.
Popular responses have shown indignation among some users.
