Readers react to Facebook experiment

We heard from several of you about Facebook’s experimental manipulation of the news feeds for 700,000 unknowing users, to see if they could affect their happiness or sadness.

Vickie Kavanagh: “At first it seems harmless enough, but there’s no way of knowing what the ramifications were from this experiment. There’s no way of really finding out if they may have thrown some poor, weak soul into a clinical depression, caused an argument between some very good friends, or led to some other untimely demise of a person. While those may be extreme and unlikely cases, I definitely think they crossed the line. Someone needs to look into this and bring them up on the carpet. No one should be part of an experiment without explicit permission.”