Facebook Experiments Survey: Most Users Think Experiments Are Invasive

Earlier this year, Facebook angered some of its users when they found out about a social experiment the site performed. The experiment involved altering users’ moods by showing some people mostly negative posts and others mostly positive posts. Since then, the site has apologized for how it handled that situation, but said that it will continue to perform similar experiments to improve the user experience. What do Facebook users think about the site performing experiments with its users?

Facebook Users

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 85% of respondents said they currently have a Facebook account. Of those users, 17% said they are very satisfied with the site and its policies. 60% said they’re somewhat satisfied with Facebook and its policies. 19% said they’re somewhat unsatisfied with Facebook. And 5% are very unsatisfied with it.

Facebook Experiments

When news broke about Facebook’s mood experiment earlier this year, plenty of users were upset. 23% of respondents said they thought the mood experiment was invasive. Just 9% thought it was not invasive. 30% had no opinion. And 38% were not aware of Facebook’s mood experiment. But in general, 55% of Facebook users said they think that Facebook doing any kind of experiments with its users is invasive. 13% do not think it is invasive for Facebook to do experiments with its users. And 32% had no opinion.

User Experience

But although the act of doing these experiments might seem invasive, the site claims that they can actually make the experience better for users in the long run. But just 7% of Facebook users said they definitely think social experiments can help make the site better for users. 35% think that social experiments can probably help make Facebook better. 45% think that social experiments probably won’t make Facebook better for its users. And 14% think it definitely won’t make the site any better. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Facebook at Mozcon from FlickrWhat do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on October 7 via AYTM’s online survey panel.