San Francisco Chronicle - Somewhere in Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, a team of eggheads secretly plotted to make you happy or sad by posting uplifting or depressing content on your news feed. In other words, a publicly traded corporation that makes money by showing you ads tried to toy with your feelings. Facebook's core business, after all, is all about manipulating users, whether it's through personalized ads or those ubiquitous emoticons. [...] that agenda is no different from the rest of the information thrown our way each day via television commercials, banner ads or sponsored Tweets: to provoke an emotional response. First off, that kind of defeats the point of the experiment. Facebook experiments are the price we pay for the ability to post videos of cute cats on the world's most popular social network without a fee.
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