Facebook apologized for conducting a hidden psychological test on its users

After conducting a secret Physiological test, the chief operating executive of Facebook has apologized for the manipulation of 700,000 member accounts in a notorious secret study.

Sheryl Sandberg’s statements were the first from a Facebook administrative since it was disclosed that the social network changed users’ news feeds to observe if it had an influence on their emotions.

News came in Tuesday’s claim that it was a test trial covered by the Facebook association’s terms and conditions.

It appeared at the weekend, when the trial’s outcomes were disclosed in a paper published in a journal, that Facebook permitted researchers to manipulate the content that showed in the main section, or news feed of about 700,000 randomly picked users during a single week in January 2012.

The data-scientists were struggling to gather proof to confirm their thesis that people’s moods could spread like an ’emotional contagion’ depending on the kind of the content that they were reading.

None of the members in the Facebook trials were clearly asked for their permission, though the social network’s terms of use appears to permit for the company to operate what appears in users’ news feeds however it sees fit.

Facebook’s information-use rule says the California-based company can deploy user data for ‘internal operations, including troubleshooting, data investigation, testing, research and service upgrading.’

Ms Sandberg told television network NDTV in India during an interview that ‘we obviously communicated really defectively about this and that we really apologized and this plan was a part of ongoing research companies do to analysis different products, and that was what it was; it was badly communicated and for that communication we say sorry because we never meant to disturb you.’

Later on Facebook’s manager of policy in Europe told to the media: ‘It’s obvious that people were distressed by this research and we take responsibility for it.