And, has been caught doing just that.
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It always amazes me what people post on Facebook. Their daily activities, their deepest emotions – you name it.
By now, every Facebook user should know that FB sifts through their content – posts, pictures, links, emojis – to determine, for example, what topics are hot; what people are doing; which brands people are buying, recommending, trashing or considering; whether users are feeling happy, sad, scared, excited.
The latter is called “sentiment analysis” using computer algorithms to take users’ “emotional pulse”.
Of course, FB promises that they’ll protect users’ privacy and would never even consider divulging that information to outsiders, say, advertisers or political campaigns.
Bad news for believers: FB was caught “sharing” sentiment analysis data.
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According to USA Today …
Documents leaked to a newspaper, The Australian, indicate that Facebook executives prepared a report for one of the country’s top banks.
The report described how Facebook gleans psychological insights into the mood shifts of millions of young people in Australia and New Zealand by monitoring their status updates and photos.
The 23-page report showed Facebook’s ability to detect when users as young as 14 are feeling emotions such as defeat, stress, anxiety or being overwhelmed … and. other information on young people’s emotional well-being such as when they exhibit “nervous-excitement” are “conquering fears“.
FB claimed that it can track how emotions fluctuate during the week.
Anticipatory emotions are more likely to be expressed early in the week.
Reflective emotions increase on the weekend.
Monday-Thursday is about building confidence.
The weekend is for broadcasting achievements.
At a relatively benign level, advertisers can use that information to target ads to certain age groups … and they can time them to run on a certain day.
That’s apparently what FB got caught doing – revealing anonymous and aggregated data – to a potential advertising client.
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Let’s go a step further…
According to the article: “Facebook has also come under heavy scrutiny in the past for secretly conducting research that manipulated the emotions of users by altering what they see in their News Feed without their consent.”
So, it doesn’t take much creativity to imagine the collection and dissemination of individuals’ sentiment data that could be used to target advertising to specific individuals at specific times – say, when they’re feeling down and are vulnerable to buying certain products geared to giving them a pick-me-up, say, some new clothes, a fancy car or miracle drug.
Pretty unnerving, right?
Of course, FB assures users that it would never consider divulging that sort of data.
Yeah, right.
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Connecting dots
In a prior post, we reported on a study that concluded time on Facebook can be hazardous to your mental health.
For details see Studies: More time on Facebook … and it’s not good for you.
So, being on Facebook can make you emotionally vulnerable.
Facebook can determine when you’re vulnerable.
Facebook can sell that info to advertisers.
But, FB assures us that it won’t sell that data.
Whew … that’s a relief.
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