Tag Archives: Facebook

School posts on Facebook could threaten student privacy

School posts on Facebook could threaten student privacy

Like many of us, schools in the United States are active on social media. They use their accounts to share timely information, build community and highlight staff and students. However, our research has shown that schools’ social media activity may harm students’ privacy. As a researcher who specializes in data science in education, I and my colleagues came to […] … learn more→

Thank an aging audience for Facebook’s proposed ‘dislike’ button

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company is finally working on a much-desired feature: a “dislike” button. According to Zuckerberg, this feature has long been one of those most-requested by the Facebook audience. Although his comments suggest that the new button more likely will express sympathy or empathy, rather than simple dislike, Facebook […] … learn more→

Facebook is good for science

Over the past two weeks, an important debate has taken place about the ethics of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by researchers at Facebook Data Science and Cornell University. In the study, researchers manipulated some parameters in news feeds to evaluate how the changes influenced readers’ moods as […] … learn more→

Adding on Facebook makes us like new friends more

We’ve all returned home after a night out at a party to find a Facebook friend request from someone you briefly met but barely know. Just to be polite, you add the person to your friend list. But it turns out that this token gesture can change the course of your relationship with that person. […] … learn more→

A reply to ‘Facebook: You are your ‘Likes”

This week Charles Foster discussed the recent study showing that Facebook ‘Likes’ can be plugged into an algorithm to predict things about people – things about their demographics, their habits and their personalities – that they didn’t explicitly disclose. Charles argued that, even though the individual ‘Likes’ were voluntarily published, to use an algorithm to […] … learn more→

Facebook trials a new way to push your buttons …

Facebook is currently trialling a range of new buttons that could influence how your data is harvested. The trials have been construed by some observers as a response to the corporation’s anaemic share price, media interest in competitors such as Pinterest and Twitter, and forecasts that many users will move to the “next new thing”. […] … learn more→

Stalking your ex on Facebook is creepy … and bad for you

New research from Dr. Tara Marshall at Brunel University has found that Facebook surveillance of ex-romantic partners may disrupt post-breakup recovery and personal growth. That’s bad news, because earlier this year Veronika Lukacs found that almost 90% of people keep tabs on their exes using Facebook. In the Brunel study, bad breakups were linked to […] … learn more→

To convince people, come at them from different angles

Variety is not only the spice of life. It\’s also the key to persuasion, according to research at Cornell. An analysis of the behavior of millions of Facebook users has found that whether users joined and became \”engaged\” with the social network did not depend on how many members they knew, but on how many […] … learn more→