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Facebook to be more transparent about experimenting on users

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook plans to keep experimenting with how its service affects users’ behaviour -- just more responsibly, the Bloomberg news agency reported.

The loading screen of the Facebook application on a mobile phone is seen in this photo illustration taken in Lavigny May 16, 2012. Photo: Reuters

The loading screen of the Facebook application on a mobile phone is seen in this photo illustration taken in Lavigny May 16, 2012. Photo: Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook plans to keep experimenting with how its service affects users’ behaviour -- just more responsibly, the Bloomberg news agency reported.

The social network said in a blog post yesterday (Oct 2) that it is giving its researchers clearer guidelines to follow when studying sensitive topics, such as users’ emotions. Facebook said it has also created a board composed of members of its legal and privacy teams to review proposed projects.

The changes follow a controversy in June over a 2012 mood experiment that influenced what almost 700,000 Facebook members saw on their news feeds, which the company did not publicly disclose until this year.

“It is clear now that there are things we should have done differently,” Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said in yesterday’s post, referring to the 2012 experiment. “In releasing the study, we failed to communicate clearly why and how we did it.”

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