Partner Robert J. deBrauwere Quoted on Facebook's Emotion Study
Partner Robert J. deBrauwere, co-chair of Pryor Cashman's Digital Media Group, was quoted in the Law360 article "Facebook’s Controversial Emotion Study May Raise FTC’s Ire."
The article discusses the revelation that Facebook manipulated users’ news feeds to study their emotional reactions. The experiment, done by a Facebook data scientist and researchers from Cornell University and the University of California, San Francisco, was conducted among nearly 700,000 users in January 2012 and has raised some questions regarding potential ethical and legal violations.
"I think the rub here is that the 'experiment' at issue admittedly measured users’ emotional states, rather than behavioral characteristics, which, at first blush, raises red flags." said deBrauwere.
Besides the threat of a class action suit, Facebook can expect further scrutiny from the FTC. In August 2012, the FTC and Facebook finalized a settlement regarding allegations that the social networking site deceived users about the security and privacy of their personal information.
To read the article in its entirety, please click here .
