Amitai Etzioni kritisiert das (jüngste) Facebook-Experiment, meint aber zu Recht, dass die Kritiker übersähen, dass die übliche, alltägliche  Werbung viel stärker manipulativ sei:

“Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, added that it was not a “trivial undertaking,” but rather a “scandalous” experiment that “violates accepted research ethics.” What these commentators ignore is that what Facebook did not very “cool” pales in comparison to what Madison Avenue and the marketing departments of corporations from Amazon to Zales do every day of the week, during the weekends, and especially during holidays. While Facebook did not make up any new messages but merely selected some over others, from those already out in the public domain, typical advertisers concoct messages not with the purpose if finding out what would lift people’s dour mood, but rather to manipulate people to buy junk they do not need. See our short video, “You Don’t Need To Buy This.” Moreover, far from being informative, the Madison Avenue stuff is deviously manipulative. It is based on psychological research to find out how the advertisers can get around our aversions and deliberations and appeal surreptitiously to our underlying urges.If you need reminding about how this is done, regularly, while people fuss about the trivial experiment of Facebook, turn to the pages of a very carefully researched, richly documented study by Michael Moss called Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. The book reveals the ways in which various major corporations that market foods have spent scores of millions to study our urges and to design, package, and advertise foods that are bad for us but good for corporate profits. Sugar, salt, and fats are laced into products that seem to include none because they make them more addictive e.g. salt in chocolate. Labels on products are carefully framed so that the information is read in ways that are misleading e.g. instead of telling us the number of calories in the box, it tells us the number per serving. Small items are put into large boxes e.g. toys to make them seem more valuable. Boxes are given bright colors because studies show these colors illicit impulse buying. Lobbying is used to bend regulations in favor of the industries rather than customers e.g. the definition of “lean” meat has been changed so meat that used to be considered fat is now characterized as lean.”

via Facebook’s Experiment: Trivial Pursuit | Amitai Etzioni. (mehr dazu unter dem obigen Link)