The discussion triggered by Facebook’s mood manipulation experiment has been enlightening and frustrating at the same time. An enlightening aspect is how it has exposed divergent views on a practice called A/B testing, in which a company provides two versions of its service to randomly-chosen groups of users, and then measures how the users react. A frustrating aspect has been the often-confusing arguments made about the ethics of A/B testing.
One thing that is clear is that the ethics of A/B testing are an important and interesting topic. This post is my first cut at thinking through these ethical questions. I am thinking about A/B testing in general, and not just testing done for academic research purposes. Some disclaimers: I am considering A/B testing in general rather than one specific experiment; I am considering what is ethical rather than what is legal or what is required by somebody’s IRB; I am considering how people should act rather than observing how they do act.