"Irish Data Privacy Watchdog To Probe Facebook’s Research Methods"
Quoting from the site wsj.com
Posted by:Dr Ahmed.M.Shaban
Facebook’s psychological experiment on users’ emotions could cause more headaches for the social networking giant.
The Irish data privacy watchdog said it will take a broader look at Facebook’s research practices, including previous research activity, to review the company’s use of personal user information, after a paper published in June showed how Facebook manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users to see the effect on people’s emotions.
“We will be examining more closely the uses that Facebook is making of personal data for research purposes,” Billy Hawkes, the data protection commissioner for Ireland, told the Journal. Like several large American tech companies, Facebook’s European headquarters are in Dublin.
Irish and U.K. data-protection officials had already said they would probe the 2012 experiment, with particular concerns about whether Facebook had adequately asked users for consent. Facebook’s user agreement broadly says it may use people’s personal information “for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.”
The Irish office’s broader review would be an attempt to make sure Facebook complies in the future with Irish and EU laws governing use of personal data. But it will also involve examining some of the company’s prior research, the office said. Companies face fines of up to €100,000 ($136,000) and company officials can be prosecuted for failure to comply with directives from the Irish data protection office, though companies usually come to agreements with the office.
Facebook declined to comment.
The 2012 Facebook experiment was part of a larger effort by the company to research and experiment with user data. The company regularly makes public certain studies and has looked at topics such as whether people who use Facebook more are more lonely, patterns in discussions among family members and whether Facebook could prompt more people to vote in elections. The Journal’s Reed Albergotti took an in-depth look at the group responsible for this research, Facebook’s Data Science team. A former Facebook employee said researchers would frequently run tests, sometimes without any review or approval.
Facebook has said the 2012 study was done appropriately but that it was poorly explained.
While tech companies frequently test how product changes affect users’ behavior, Facebook’s 2012 newsfeed experiment touched a nerve in part because it plainly showed the scope of Facebook’s potential influence over people’s emotions and daily lives.
Irish officials will review the type of research being carried out, the safeguards in place, the justification for the research and other protocols, by both reviewing Facebook policies and conducting personal interviews.
The office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner conducts regular audits on tech companies and is currently reviewing Adobe ADBE +0.78%, Apple AAPL +0.19% andYahoo YHOO +1.43%. A previous audit of Facebook led to changes such as data policy disclosures and options for users in Europe to disable a facial recognition feature that suggests tags for photos.
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