Public criticism failed to halt Facebook’s behavior modification experiments

Evidence

Public concern failed to destabilize Facebook’s self-authorizing practice of behavior modification at scale. Even as the social influence experiment was being debated in 2012, a Facebook data scientist was already collaborating with academic researchers on a new study, “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks,” submitted to the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, where it was edited by a well-known Princeton social psychologist, Susan Fiske, and published in June 2014. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 942

Categorization

• XREF: The PNAS editorial role shows academic institutions laundering surveillance-capitalist research, echoing themes of captured science from other reading. — connects to: Facebook’s systematic denial was timed to habituate users before scrutiny could bite. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 498; Facebook’s behavior modification operates covertly at scale with no social or legal controls — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 955; Facebook’s routine behavioral manipulation made its research experiment appear legally unremarkable. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 949 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Facebook’s behavior modification operates covertly at scale with no social or legal controls #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 955
• Facebook’s routine behavioral manipulation made its research experiment appear legally unremarkable. #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 949
• Early Facebook users protested News Feed as invasive but later embraced it #qualifies (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1461
• American public rejected behaviorism’s claims over individual freedom #responds-to (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1022