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I’m also reminded of the experiment that Facebook ran on its users to try to make them depressed. Modifying the news feed algorithm in a controlled way to figure out if they could make users fall into a depression or not.

Not disclosed to those users of course! But for anybody out there that thinks corporations are not actively trying to manipulate your emotions and mental health in a way that would benefit the corporation but not you - there’s the proof!

They don’t care about you, in fact sometimes big social media corporations will try really hard to target you specifically to make you feel sad.



> I’m also reminded of the experiment that Facebook ran on its users to try to make them depressed. Modifying the news feed algorithm in a controlled way to figure out if they could make users fall into a depression or not.

Study: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks - https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1320040111 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111

Reporting:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...




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