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OKCupid’s co-founder has attacked the concept of ethical oversight during experiments on internet users, following his defence of the practice in a blogpost titled “We experiment on human beings!”.
Christian Rudder accepted blame for stoking the fires around the topic, admitting that his initial blogpost was “sensationally written”, but stood by the argument that experimenting on users was “just part of the scientific method”.
Speaking to On The Media’s TLDR podcast, Rudder said that there was no consideration given to letting users opt-in to experimentation, because “once people know that they’re being studied along a particular axis, inevitably they’re gonna act differently.
“I was in some psych experiments when I was in college, just because they give you 20 bucks to go to the department and you, y’know, you sign a form. But that is informed consent – which users can’t see, but I’m putting in quotes.”
Asked by the host, Alex Goldman, if OKCupid had ever considered bringing in an ethicist to vet the experiments, Rudder said: “To wring his hands all day for a $100,000 a year?”.
He then clarified that he “was making a joke. No, we have not thought about that”.
He later asked “What if our algorithm was far worse than random? Then if we hadn’t had run that experiment we basically are doing something terrible to all the users. Like, this is the only way to find this stuff out, if you guys have an alternative to the scientific method I’m all ears”.
How acceptable is it to ‘play’ with users’ data?
Rudder explained that the motivation for his blogpost was trying to kickstart a conversation around the acceptability of websites experimenting on users. “If you think that OKCupid has unlocked the mysteries of love and has an ironclad algorithm,” he said, “and prophetically can tell you exactly who is right for you, you’re a crazy. Y’know?
“So, we’re doing our best, for sure, and it’s the same thing. I think people will realise that that’s how these sites work, that’s how they evolve, they’re doing the best job that they can, and they also have their own interests as well. And, and maybe that’s the process that we’re looking at. And that’s the kind of, again the kind of conversation that I think Facebook on accident, and OkCupid on purpose, is trying to kickstart.”
Rudder had weighed into the conversation with a blogpost in late July detailing the ways in which OKCupid performed experiments to assess the value of its service.
While the company is known for its use of data to improve its services, for many users the approach to experimentation – actively interfering with the site, as opposed to passively observing – was unsettling.
“First, going on ‘a date you didn’t like’ isn’t a frivolous thing,” wrote the journalist Tim Carmody. “It definitely incurs more material costs than not seeing a Facebook status. And bad (or good) messages or a bad or good date can definitely have a bigger emotional impact as well.
“More importantly, though, don’t make this just a question about dates or feelings, about what somebody did or didn’t read and what its effect on them was. I don’t care if you think someone making a dating profile is a frivolous thing. Somebody made that. They thought the company hosting it could be trusted to present it honestly. They were wrong.”
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