A private corporation is developing the capability to alter the moods of massive populations in a controlled way; unlike mass media, society doesn't (yet?) understand this sort of influence.
Perhaps soon Facebook will understand how to tweak the news feed algorithm to e.g. whip up negative sentiment in response to an attack? Or stop a particular candidate being elected? Etc.
Perhaps they will use this for good, as you mention. But its still huge power for a corporation to wield; effectively in secret - its easy enough for an observer to make a judgement about a bias in e.g. Fox News, and call that out - but it'd be very hard to observe subtle changes to individual news feeds.
I don't really buy your argument that they have a clear moral responsibility to develop this capability. That depends on the potential good of such capability if used for good, the potential bad if used for bad, and the chance it will be used for each.
So I don't see this as analogous to a corporation conducting a clinical trial of a drug; this is more analogous to a clinical trial of a drug that could also be used as a weapon, with the more complicated ethical issues that would entail.
I think its absolutely something there should be ethical discussion around.
> Perhaps they will use this for good, as you mention. But its still huge power for a corporation to wield; effectively in secret - its easy enough for an observer to make a judgement about a bias in e.g. Fox News, and call that out - but it'd be very hard to observe subtle changes to individual news feeds.
This is power and capability given to all media organizations. When you permit their existence, you permit both their deliberate use of their capabilities for goals you dislike but also their accidental unintentional random biases. There is no difference in terms of the consequences.
> In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. “What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher. “So that the room will be empty.” At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Isn't your reference to other media organization an appeal to popularity? Why shouldn't we strive for media that are more concerned about privacy and dignity? Furthermore the interactivity and private data make social networks a whole different beast.
> There is no difference in terms of the consequences.
Not in terms of consequences, but there is the difference that in a scientific study you need the consent of the experimental subjects. I think it's problematic that they assume this was given when the users clicked the TOS checkbox, since they must know that a large percentage does not know what it entails.
Perhaps soon Facebook will understand how to tweak the news feed algorithm to e.g. whip up negative sentiment in response to an attack? Or stop a particular candidate being elected? Etc.
Perhaps they will use this for good, as you mention. But its still huge power for a corporation to wield; effectively in secret - its easy enough for an observer to make a judgement about a bias in e.g. Fox News, and call that out - but it'd be very hard to observe subtle changes to individual news feeds.
I don't really buy your argument that they have a clear moral responsibility to develop this capability. That depends on the potential good of such capability if used for good, the potential bad if used for bad, and the chance it will be used for each. So I don't see this as analogous to a corporation conducting a clinical trial of a drug; this is more analogous to a clinical trial of a drug that could also be used as a weapon, with the more complicated ethical issues that would entail.
I think its absolutely something there should be ethical discussion around.