The connection between scientific and practical activity and morality is one of the conditions for the existence and effective functioning of modern civilization. When conducting research, it is essential to consider several critical ethical constraints that are guidelines for reflecting and regulating people’s behavior. So, it is worth considering how ethical it is for large social platforms like Facebook to conduct experiments on its users without their knowledge.
The article says that such a popular social network as Facebook is experimenting on its users. Research shows that the platform intentionally managed the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users in order to explore emotional contagion through social media (Waldman, 2014). The study examined the impact of positive and negative news feed entries on user posts throughout the day. The author says that Facebook distorted the research standards, exceeding the criteria set out in the federal law and the declarations of human rights (Waldman, 2014). The main component of ethical research is the consent of the party being experimented on, and in this case, this aspect was not observed. In such research, it is necessary to ensure the rights of people, the voluntary nature of their participation, the preventive nature of the presentation of the results, and the warning of possible consequences.
The article then raises the question of whether the user agreement clauses are sufficient to conduct research without the participants’ consent. Facebook does not receive federal funding for such research, so the investigation could be exempt from the Common Rule (Waldman, 2014). Due to the lack of a formal agreement and the absence of clarity about what legal standards the experiment met, the ethics of the study is being questioned.
Thus, the basic moral principle of respect for the individual’s rights and dignity in the modern ethical model must be observed in any study. It is essential to inform participants about the goals, methods, sources of funding, and any possible outcomes, results, and potential risks of the study and its discomfort. That is why the author doubts the ethics of the research conducted by the Facebook platform, which did not have the consent of users.
Reference
Waldman, K. (2014). Facebook’s Unethical Experiment.Slate. Web.