Visit Facebook big data team

Wen Qingran / Sohu IT reporter in Silicon Valley

Lead: make what, your 'feelings' FB is so playful.

Perhaps not a privacy controversy triggered by an academic report a few days ago, few of the 1.3 billion Facebook users should know that there is always a mysterious 'Data Science Team' inside social boss.

In 2012, a full 700,000 users were tested by Facebook for a week without any knowledge. Test content is very good Understand: Facebook in the test object page 'artificially' set some positive or negative emotional keywords, and control the content you read in your News Feed, after collecting different users in their Post In the expression of behavior. After a week-long data collection, members of the Big Data team can take a look: whether external information can have an infection-like effect on a user's emotions. Give some students first make up for the brain, the uproar of the storm is how the thing children.

The final answer is yes.

The results of the study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences two weeks ago. The thesis concludes: "The emotional expression of other people on Facebook affects our own emotions, which in turn can lead to large-scale emotional contagion on social networks."

With this enthusiasm, Xiaobian recently visited Facebook's data science team, to find out, this listening to the rather fickle Data Science Team in the end is doing?

Is the sauce purple, there are two types of data scientists at Facebook, the main responsibilities of the first category is: testing new products - they will put different FB products presented in front of different users to see everyone's reaction. By analyzing the hard data to determine the performance of certain products how? What can be done to further develop? What else can be improved direction? etc.

The second category of data scientists is more advanced: their work and research are mainly presented in various authoritative academic journals. You know, Facebook holds the largest database of sociology today. And most of the time, social boss is also willing to share their own data resources with various institutions of higher learning. There is no exception to this privacy incident we saw today; this 'emotion test' was actually designed and implemented by Facebook and several scholars at Cornell University in the United States. After the paper was published, Facebook did not expect the reaction of the public spicy.

What many people do not know is that Facebook's data science team has actually been established since 2007, and so far many influential papers have been published in the profession, except that ordinary people did not pay special attention. No one thought they would be FB as a mouse, as the subject of academic experiments.

The storm triggered by the 'emotional test' finally brought Facebook's data capture approach to public view. After some time, we will see a lot of open discussion, to rebut Facebook doing morally morally? I believe it will also have a profound impact on many academic fields that rely on big data research.

This 'emotional test' involves 700,000 FB users. Today, these "mice" still do not know they participated in the test. . . The question remains unresolved is whether these innocent subjects in the end can get some kind of 'notice'? Since all the data is being anonymized, it's quite possible that even Facebook itself will not be able to put these test objects in check. We just know that these people are English speakers on FB and also include underage users. Undoubtedly, this is another major dispute over the storm.

Really let the public outrage is that Facebook is likely to 'manipulate' their emotions consciously, so that everyone is more 'sad' or 'depressed' than usual because the FB shields some of the positive posts in Newsfeed.

FB how to respond?

Yesterday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sandberg said at a press conference in India that the research was in communication with the outside world and she was sorry for that. In other words, she did not think there was any problem with the study itself, but it was indeed deplorable that it was presented and portrayed in the public manner (for example, using sensitive words such as "manipulation").

Members of the Big Data team told me that Facebook attaches great importance to the controversy triggered by the storm and is likely to implement a series of internal reform plans in the future, most likely in the more rigorous and disciplined review process for each academic study .

At the same time Xiaobian also learned that this storm not only implicated the protagonist FB, a lot of institutions of higher learning with FB also paranoid. An in-doctorate in social psychology at the University of Cambridge told me: "These days, the entire lab building in the department is talking about this essay of the FB and the controversy it raises. Will our research environment be the reason for this essay Changed? Everyone is watching closely. "