In June, it was revealed that Facebook had conducted a research study on more than 600,000 of its users to determine whether it could change their emotions by manipulating their news feeds. The answer was “yes.”
Apparently, Facebook considered this research study to be fully justified because they had gotten “informed consent.” In Facebook’s view, this “informed consent” was obtained when users clicked on the button to agree to Facebook’s Data Use Policy that included a clause that read – We use the information we receive about you […] for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.