In Joe Rogan Podcast, Harvard Historian Recalled Facebook's Controversial 2012 Emotional Experiment That Triggered Suicidal Thoughts In Some Users - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Content Warning: This article discusses a news story involving suicidal thoughts. Please be mindful as you proceed.

In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on Thursday, Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov discussed an experiment conducted by Facebook in 2012.

What Happened: A 2012 Facebook experiment that altered user news feeds to study emotional contagion had also sparked a U.K. investigation and raised ethical concerns about privacy and manipulation.

Lemov elaborated how the social media giant altered the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users without their consent to study emotional contagion, modifying posts to be more positive or negative.

A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirmed the experiment’s findings, showing that decreasing positive posts resulted in more negative user content and vice versa. This demonstrated that social media can influence emotions on a large scale.

Meta did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comment.

One user even linked their suicidal thoughts to the altered feed, according to Lemov. The study found that emotions can spread through emotional contagion, leading people to feel similar emotions unconsciously. Although the study mentioned no case of suicidal thoughts.

The experiment prompted a British government probe into possible sanctions over its global impact and amid the escalating row, Facebook's then Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg admitted, "We communicated really badly on this subject…We take privacy at Facebook really seriously."

In this context, Lemov stated, “2012 was kind of an important point in the development of social media.”

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Why It Matters: Meta Platforms META, the parent of Facebook, is not new to debates surrounding its user data handling and privacy policies. On Wednesday, the Austrian advocacy group, NOYB, announced that it is preparing to seek an injunction against Meta, potentially leading to billion-euro damages claims. This action is in response to Meta's plans to use Europeans' personal data for AI training.

A March report also revealed, through court filings, that Meta has been generating profits from its Llama AI models via revenue-sharing deals with hosting companies.

This revelation also comes in the wake of a landmark antitrust trial where CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified about a previously unimplemented plan to reset all Facebook users' connections without their consent in 2022 to give the dying platform a new boost.

Meta holds a momentum rating of 88.49% and a growth rating of 76.06%, according to Benzinga's Proprietary Edge Rankings.

The shares of Meta lost 2.35% to close at $643.88 on Thursday. Over the past year, the stock surged 36.06%.