Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, responds to the uproar about the company’s clandestine psychological experiment on its members:
“This was part of ongoing research companies do to test different products, and that was what it was; it was poorly communicated. And for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you.”
So an experiment designed to explore how the delivery of information can be programmed to manipulate people’s emotional states was just part of routine product-development testing? No worries. I apologize for getting upset.
Image: Detail of Andre Brouillet’s “Une Leçon Clinique à la Salpêtrière“
“We never meant to upset you.” …except for the fact that our experiment’s hypothesis included the possibility of upsetting you. But other than that, we really didn’t mean to upset you.