The Facebook research study that caused much negative reaction raised the question of how often Facebook and other websites conducted such "research" without getting informed consent from the participants. The answer appears to have been given by the founder of the website OkCupid, Christian Rudder who writes:
|We noticed recently that people didn't like it when Facebook |"experimented" with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting |involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, |you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, |on every site. That's how websites work.
He then goes on to describe three experiments conducted at the OkCupid's website; he provides this information in a blog entry on the OkCupid website; see: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/we-experiment-on-human-beings/ The issue of informed consent is never raised. It seems that the owner of a website can do whatever they want if a user agrees to the conditions for using the website. The is the price one pays for the using the website. Ah, the real world! -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=37736 or send a blank email to leave-37736-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
