Harvard Historian Tells Joe Rogan How Facebook's Controversial 2012 Emotion Experiment Reportedly Triggered Suicidal Thoughts In Some Users

Quick Summary:

Lemov elaborated how the social media giant altered the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users without their consent to study emotional contagion, modifying posts to be more positive or negative.

What Happened: A 2012 Facebook experiment that altered user news feeds to study emotional contagion had also sparked a U.K.investigation and raised ethical concerns about privacy and manipulation.

A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirmed the experiment’s findings, showing that decreasing positive posts resulted in more negative user content and vice versa.

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Article Details

Author / Journalist: Namrata Sen

Category: Technology

Markets: United StatesAustria

Topics: Markets Benzinga neuro Mark Zuckerberg Tech News Benzinga Facebook Data Privacy Joe Rogan META

Source Website Secure: Yes (HTTPS)

News Sentiment: Neutral

Fact Checked: Legitimate

Article Type: News Report

Published On: 2025-05-16 @ 10:34:21 (18 hours ago)

News Timezone: GMT +8:00

News Source URL: benzinga.com

Language: English

Article Length: 566 words

Reading Time: 4 minutes read

Sentences: 30 lines

Sentence Length: 19 words per sentence (average)

Platforms: Desktop Web, Mobile Web, iOS App, Android App

Copyright Owner: © Benzinga

News ID: 28744118

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