Two articles, next to each other, in my rss reader this morning. The first is about Facebook, via Marco Arment.
Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state.
... And there was no need to ask study “participants” for consent, as they’d already given it by agreeing to Facebook’s terms of service in the first place.
Facebook used to be somewhat useful and interesting, to the point where the privacy stuff was bearable. Now it's filled with junk and just flat out creepy, even out-creeping Google.
The other one is from the former "Grandmaster of evil"*, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, via The Loop:
So here is our appeal to you: As you leave Stanford, take your genius and your optimism and your empathy and go change the world in ways that will make millions of others optimistic as well.
You don’t have to rush. You have careers to launch, debts to pay, spouses to meet and marry. That’s enough for now.
But in the course of your lives, without any plan on your part, you’ll come to see suffering that will break your heart.
When it happens, and it will, don’t turn away from it; turn toward it.
That is the moment when change is born.
Gates has gone from Mr Corporate Evil to possibly one of the most prolific philanthropists in the world. The commencement speech is well worth reading.
* or so the tinfoil hat brigade in the 90's would have you believe.
