‘Facebook, OkCupid, and the Ethics of Online Social Experiments’ – HubSpot

Lindsay Kolowich says, “Recently, two different social websites admitted they ran experiments on users who had no idea they were being experimented on. Facebook ran tests to see if they could affect users’ emotions, and OkCupid ran tests mismatching users to see if they would interact with each other differently.

The impact of these social experiments was pretty small, but they raise important questions about the ethics of social experimentation. Why were people so angered by these tests, but most people don’t raise an eyebrow when it comes to A/B testing website design or calls-to-action?”.

Facebook, OkCupid, and the Ethics of Online Social Experiments

HubSpot