Facebook May Face Probe In Europe Over Experiment | TechTree.com

Facebook May Face Probe In Europe Over Experiment

Ireland authorities have sent a series of questions to the social network giant

 

Facebook seems to be in a soup for deliberately manipulating the emotional content of its users' news feed, with Europe’s privacy regulators looking whether the company brokany privacy laws.

The social network conducted a week long experiment on 7 lakh users – roughly one out of 2,500 of its users and had claimed that it came under the blanket permission for research as a condition of using the service.

[Also Read: Facebook can influence your mood]

This created a huge public outcry and Ireland authorities have sent a series of question to the Facebook. According to reports Ireland has asked Facebook whether it had the consent of the users for the study.

It is interesting because Facebook’s global operations, outside North America, is headquartered in Dublin. While the company hasn’t released the origin of the users on whom the experiment was conducted, close to 80 percent of Facebook’s 1.2 billion users are outside North America.

Similarly, Britain is also looking at potential privacy breaches in the country. However no official investigation has been launched into Facebook’s practices.

Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, on Wednesday during an interview with NDTV said:  “We clearly communicated really badly about this and that we really regret,” she said in the interview. She is in  India to meet Indian women entrepreneurs.

“We do research in an ongoing way, in a very privacy protective way, to improve our services and this was done with that goal.”

Sandberg also expressed confidence that the company will weather any regulatory inquiries.

“We are in communication with regulators all over the world and this will be OK,” she said in the interview. 


TAGS: Facebook

 
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