On the Value of User Agency, and Community Trust

Facebook and okcupid recently shared (overshared?) their blase attitude towards running experiments on their users. It’s not about whether it’s legal, or even whether it’s ethically permissible. Legal doesn’t mean ethical — and permissible doesn’t mean good.

What’s being revealed here is how these companies view us, their users. We have an implicit agreement with these companies that we’ll give them our data in exchange for a relatively transparent service. The nature of these experiments shows how little they value our agency, and how little they value our trust.

These studies leave me wondering how else Facebook and okcupid are falsifying my experience on their platforms. What’s missing from the public statements being made by these companies is an appreciation that users want an authentic experience, not to be treated like test subjects. They betray a lack of consideration for the agency and intentions of the users on their platforms. Social networking and online dating is deeply personal; often intimate. We need to be able to trust the integrity that our connections with others on these systems isn’t being mediated for the sake of experimentation.