Sheryl Sandberg apologises for Facebook psychological experiment on users
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has apologised following the social network's psychological experiment, telling users: "We never meant to upset you."
Apology: Sheryl Sandberg
The apology follows fury over the week-long experiment that affected almost 700,000 users, which only came to light in a research paper.
Sandberg said: “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 apologise. We never meant to upset you.”
The research found that that users’ posts were influenced by those shown to them in their News Feed: if they saw positive news they were more likely to be positive in their own posts.
Sandberg added "We take privacy and security at Facebook really seriously because that is something that allows people to share [opinions]."