Tech

Facebook exec’s regret falls on deaf ears

This time Facebook’s words of regret don’t seem to be cutting it.

In what appeared to be an effort to address foreign regulatory watchdogs, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told television network NDTV in India that “we clearly communicated really badly about this and that we really regret.” Later she added: “Facebook has apologized and certainly we never want to do anything that upsets users.”

The apology comes as UK regulators are investigating revelations that Facebook treated hordes of its users like laboratory rats in an experiment probing into their emotions.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said Wednesday that it wants to learn more about the circumstances underlying a 2-year-old study carried out by two US universities and the world’s largest social network.

The inquiry is being coordinated with authorities in Ireland, where Facebook has headquarters for its European operations, as well as with French regulators.

This is just the latest in a string of incidents that have raised questions about whether the privacy rights of Facebook’s nearly 1.3 billion users are being trampled by the company’s drive to dissect data and promote behavior that could help sell more online advertising.

Sandberg’s words of contrition sounded hollow to Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy-rights group. He points to Facebook job openings looking for researchers specializing in data mining and analysis as evidence that the company still has every intention of digging deeper into its users’ psyches and preferences.

“They are engaged in secret surveillance of its users to figure out how to make more money for their advertisers,” Chester said.

In this case, Facebook allowed researchers to manipulate the content that appeared in the main section, or “news feed,” of about 700,000 randomly selected users during a single week in January 2012.

The data scientists were trying to collect evidence to prove their thesis that people’s moods could spread like an “emotional contagion” depending on the tenor of the content that they were reading.