Please respond to the following questions by writing a short essay (1,000 to 1,500 words) in which you answer these questions, and other questions you think are worth answering. It is preferred not to write several short essays as answers to each individual question.

The Facebook experiment: A breach in public privacy Facebook, one of the most popular social networking platforms involving millions of users has been a place, where people has been sharing their thoughts with their friends and families. The Facebook’s emotional contagion experiment study as published in year 2012 made it clear that while signing into this website they have actually allowed Facebook authority to breach their privacy and personal space. Although we had to accept the sites data policy to sign into this platform but it is very much wrong ethically to use its users as a subject of study without their consent. Facebook not only violated the identity based norms but also took the advantage of the vulnerability of its users to disclose sensitive information regarding oneself. The study involves the manipulation of the news feed of over 689,003 people to determine if the emotion they experienced from the news feed content affected the emotion they later expressed through their own posts on the platform. The study lasted for a week when a group of users were subjected to more positive contents on their news feed while the other group were allowed to see less positive or negative feeds. The research outcomes shows an interesting pattern which can be summarised in two points: These findings show that other user’s moods have an impact on our own emotions, providing experimental support for the widespread contagion that social networks can cause. It means seeing positive things happening in others life makes us feel positive. People who were exposed to fewer emotional posts in their news feeds were generally less expressive on the days that followed and showed a withdrawal effect. Although the experimental data published was criticised by majority of people but few critics often had a counter argument that because people who upload their information online have complete control over what they type, they alone are to responsible when something goes wrong. The three ethical rules that must kept in mind while performing social experiments includes (a) no harm, (b) informed consent and (c) voluntary participation. Though this study had not caused direct harm to any individuals however it violated other principles by subjecting unaware individuals to random science experiments. Ideally, Facebook could have introduced a permission procedure like ticking a box, which would only allow willing individuals to be part of similar experiments rather than the routine psychological trickery devised by marketers seeking to sell you something. References: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users#:~:text=Facebook%20published%20the%20results%20of,either%20positive%20or%20negative%20posts. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747016115579531 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/?sh=4072dc09197c https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1320040111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1412469111#:~:text=PSYCHOLOGICAL%20AND%20COGNITIVE%20SCIENCES%20PNAS,Guillory%2C%20and%20Jeffrey%20T.