notes.husk.org/likes images.

OKCupid social experiments

OKCupid’s researchers respond to the furore over the Facebook social experiments by openly admitting to experimenting with their users without their consent. They say “guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.” - failing to realise the difference between testing systems and testing on humans, bypassing the standard rules of informed consent before tampering with people’s love-life, hopes and sanity. 

The most alarming experiment is when they lied to people about their match with others to see if the algorithm’s recommendation influenced how they felt about the other person, even if they were a bad match. The screenshot above shows that couples that truly scored a 30% match but were told they had a 90% match were far more likely to engage in conversation, with odds of exchanging four messages jumping from 9.7% to 17.4%.  The screenshot below shows them reversing the experiment - people who were actually ideal for each other were told they weren’t, lessening the chances of them engaging which each other (yes, some real people’s chances of finding love were compromised during this experiment). Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci rightly points out that these experiments highlight the stealth power of algorithmic mediation.