Wednesday 2 July 2014

All my concerns about Facebook's lack of ethics coalesced on 30 June 2014.....


…when I came across this ethically challenged study by Adam D. I. KramerJamie E. Guillory and Jeffrey T. Hancock:

On Facebook, people frequently express emotions, which are later seen by their friends via Facebook's "News Feed" product (8). Because people's friends frequently produce much more content than one person can view, the News Feed filters posts, stories, and activities undertaken by friends. News Feed is the primary manner by which people see content that friends share. Which content is shown or omitted in the News Feed is determined via a ranking algorithm that Facebook continually develops and tests in the interest of showing viewers the content they will find most relevant and engaging. One such test is reported in this study: A test of whether posts with emotional content are more engaging.

The experiment manipulated the extent to which people (N = 689,003) were exposed to emotional expressions in their News Feed. This tested whether exposure to emotions led people to change their own posting behaviors, in particular whether exposure to emotional content led people to post content that was consistent with the exposure—thereby testing whether exposure to verbal affective expressions leads to similar verbal expressions, a form of emotional contagion. People who viewed Facebook in English were qualified for selection into the experiment. Two parallel experiments were conducted for positive and negative emotion: One in which exposure to friends' positive emotional content in their News Feed was reduced, and one in which exposure to negative emotional content in their News Feed was reduced. In these conditions, when a person loaded their News Feed, posts that contained emotional content of the relevant emotional valence, each emotional post had between a 10% and 90% chance (based on their User ID) of being omitted from their News Feed for that specific viewing. It is important to note that this content was always available by viewing a friend's content directly by going to that friend's "wall" or "timeline," rather than via the News Feed. Further, the omitted content may have appeared on prior or subsequent views of the News Feed. Finally, the experiment did not affect any direct messages sent from one user to another.

Posts were determined to be positive or negative if they contained at least one positive or negative word, as defined by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software (LIWC2007) (9) word counting system, which correlates with self-reported and physiological measures of well-being, and has been used in prior research on emotional expression (7, 8, 10). LIWC was adapted to run on the Hadoop Map/Reduce system (11) and in the News Feed filtering system, such that no text was seen by the researchers. As such, it was consistent with Facebook's Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research. Both experiments had a control condition, in which a similar proportion of posts in their News Feed were omitted entirely at random (i.e., without respect to emotional content). Separate control conditions were necessary as 22.4% of posts contained negative words, whereas 46.8% of posts contained positive words. So for a person for whom 10% of posts containing positive content were omitted, an appropriate control would withhold 10% of 46.8% (i.e., 4.68%) of posts at random, compared with omitting only 2.24% of the News Feed in the negativity-reduced control.
The experiments took place for 1 wk (January 11–18, 2012). Participants were randomly selected based on their User ID, resulting in a total of 155,000 participants per condition who posted at least one status update during the experimental period….
The results show emotional contagion. As Fig. 1 illustrates, for people who had positive content reduced in their News Feed, a larger percentage of words in people's status updates were negative and a smaller percentage were positive. When negativity was reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results suggest that the emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks (3, 7, 8), and providing support for previously contested claims that emotions spread via contagion through a network......



Unfortunately Facebook Inc does not appear to understand that involving 689,003 English-speaking people in an online psychological experiment without their knowledge, one which sought to manipulate their emotional states (and therefore their sense of wellbeing) and, then calmly and erroneously telling the world that the Data Use Policy terms and conditions imposed by the company when anyone creates a personal Facebook account was in fact "informed consent" for this experiment, is an appalling abuse of power.

That Cornell University and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) facilitated this experiment is equally appalling.

 On 29 June 2014 The Wall Street Journal reported these responses:

What many of us feared is already a reality: Facebook is using us as lab rats, and not just to figure out which ads we'll respond to but actually change our emotions," wrote Animalnewyork.com, a blog post that drew attention to the study Friday morning.


"It's completely unacceptable for the terms of service to force everybody on Facebook to participate in experiments," said Kate Crawford, visiting professor at MIT's Center for Civic Media and principal researcher at Microsoft Research.

Ms. Crawford said it points to broader problem in the data science industry. Ethics are not "a major part of the education of data scientists and it clearly needs to be," she said.

Asked a Forbes.com blogger: "Is it okay for Facebook to play mind games with us for science? It's a cool finding, but manipulating unknowing users' emotional states to get there puts Facebook's big toe on that creepy line."

Slate.com called the experiment "unethical" and said "Facebook intentionally made thousands upon thousands of people sad."

Mr. Kramer defended the ethics of the project. He apologized for wording in the published study that he said might have made the experiment seem sinister. "And at the end of the day, the actual impact on people in the experiment was the minimal amount to statistically detect it," he wrote on Facebook.

Facebook also said the study was conducted anonymously, so researchers could not learn the names of the research subjects.

Mr. Kramer said that the content—both positive and negative—that was removed from some users' news feeds might have reappeared later.

The emotional changes in the research subjects was small. For instance, people who saw fewer positive posts only reduced the number of their own positive posts by a tenth of a percent.

Comments from Facebook users poured in Sunday evening on Mr. Kramer's Facebook page. The comments were wide-ranging, from people who had no problem with the content, to those who thought Facebook should respond by donating money to help people who struggle with mental health issues.

"I appreciate the statement," one user wrote. "But emotional manipulation is emotional manipulation, no matter how small of a sample it affected."

Perhaps Facebook users need to step back and consider what this experiment says about both the people running this giant social media platform and the staff they employ.


Do you really want Danger Muffin (left) aka Adam D. I. Kramer messing with your head just because he can?










UPDATE

The Financial Express 3 July 2014:

British regulators are investigating revelations that Facebook treated hordes of its users like laboratory rats in an experiment probing into their emotions.
The Information Commissioner's Office said Wednesday that it wants to learn more about the circumstances underlying a 2-year-old study carried out by two U.S. universities and the world's largest social network.
The inquiry is being coordinated with authorities in Ireland, where Facebook has headquarters for its European operations, as well as with French regulators.
This is just the latest in a string of incidents that have raised questions about whether the privacy rights of Facebook's nearly 1.3 billion users are being trampled by the company's drive to dissect data and promote behavior that could help sell more online advertising.

Reasons given by the NSW Office of Coal Seam Gas for the suspension of Metgasco Limited's drilling activities at Bentley


Excerpt from the NSW Office of Coal Seam Gas Executive Summary: Reasons for Metgasco Review Decision 26 June 2014:

The Director decided to confirm the suspension of Metgasco's activities because, in her opinion:

● Metgasco had not developed a community consultation plan in accordance with the Guideline. This was not to say that Metgasco was not undertaking community consultation, but there was no evidence of a plan as required by the Guideline and by condition 8 of Schedule 2 of PEL 16.

● Metgasco had not adequately identified relevant stakeholders. Metgasco's consultation efforts had been limited to landholders within 2km of the proposed Rosella Exploration Well, the Richmond River Council, local indigenous groups, and the general community. However, the Director considered that Lismore and Kyogle Councils also had a significant interest in the activities being undertaken by Metgasco and should have been engaged as proactively as Richmond Valley Council. Further, the Director was not satisfied that Metgasco had undertaken an appropriately detailed analysis of the stakeholders given the circumstances of the case such as local environment groups, chambers of commerce or other interested community groups. Although the consultation undertaken by Metgasco was active, it was too narrow and the identification of stakeholders was inadequate. Metgasco limited its focus to an area and people that it thought it could positively influence. This was considered to be contrary to the Guideline and accordingly condition 8 of Schedule 2 of PEL 16.

● the consultation undertaken by Metgasco had not been effective. The Director considered that Metgasco could take a significantly more sophisticated approach to community engagement than it had done.

● Metgasco's decision to defer a broader consultation program until after the Rosella Exploration Well had been drilled was not reasonable given the escalation of opposition to the activity in the Northern Rivers area from the beginning of the year.

The Director considered that Metgasco needs to develop a clear and sophisticated community consultation plan to deal with community consultation in the complex community operating environment of PEL 16.

In her reasons, the Director reiterated the offer of support which the Division of Resources and Energy, the OCSG and the Land and Water Commissioner is able to provide in this respect.

Tuesday 1 July 2014

Lower Clarence Arts & Crafts Association 49th consecutive Open Annual Competitive Arts and Crafts Exhibition 4-6 July 2014 at Gulmarrad




This year is the 49th consecutive Open Annual Competitive Arts and Crafts Exhibition. It will be open over three days from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 July at Gulmarrad School this year, and will be well worth your visit. There will be market stalls, food and music, demonstrations of art and craft, and a wonderful display of the talents of the Clarence Valley. Tell your rellies and bring your friends!

Gulmarrad Public School
466 Brooms Head Road, Gulmarrad NSW 2463 – approx. 5km from Maclean

Exhibition open 9am to 4pm Friday & Saturday, 9.30am to 2.30pm Sunday

Entry fee $5 Adults
Children under 12 FREE

The Real Age of Entitlement: State governments spent $17.6 billion supporting mineral & fossil fuel industries between 2008-2014 and Australian Government intends spending more than $40 billion over three years supporting fossil fuel industry



Supporters of the minerals and fossil fuel industries, like Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and the New South Wales Minerals Council, regularly emphasise the money that these industries pay to state governments. Much less is said about the money that state governments pay to assist these industries.

State government assistance to the minerals and fossil fuel industries is considerable.
Based on an analysis of state government budget papers, we estimate that a total of almost $18 billion has been contributed by the taxpayer over the last six budgets.

This assistance takes many forms. Sometimes it is a direct cash payment. For example, the New South Wales government gave multinational coal companies $10 million in 2009 as an ‘assistance package’. Other times it comes in the form of discounted access to services provided by the state and its businesses – Queensland has provided the coal industry with ‘concessions’ on access to rail services worth over $1 billion between 2012-13 and 2013-14.

Often assistance comes in the form of infrastructure or projects that wholly or partly benefit the minerals and fossil fuel industries. Sometimes this expenditure brings a financial return, as in the case of Western Australia’s hundreds of millions of dollars spent on developing port infrastructure. Sometimes it doesn’t – the New South Wales government is unlikely to see any return on its $76 million expenditure on the Cobbora Coal project…..

At the federal level, The Australia Institute publishes an annual study on subsidies of the mining industry, which totalled $4.5 billion in 2013, up from $4.0 billion in 2012.
Other organisations publish estimates of subsidies provided to fossil fuel use and production, which also focus largely on assistance at a federal level….

...the loss to the New South Wales government relating to the treatment of the Coal Research Levy.
This levy for $0.05 per tonne of coal mined is fully deductable from royalties that coal miners pay to the New South Wales government for the rights to mine the state’s coal. This deduction is effectively a subsidy of millions of dollars per year from the New South Wales government to the Australian Coal Association Research Program….


The assessment concludes that the Australian Government is set to spend over 
$40 billion (see Table on page 4) in the form of tax rebates and concessions,
foregone revenue and expedited write downs of assets per year from 2013/14 to 
2016/17. 
This assessment only includes tax measures, and does not include direct grants or 
State Government measures, which could add billions more to the annual totals.

UPDATE

Australian Productivity Commission, Trade & Assistance Review 2012-13: