"We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness"
Recently, Facebook decided to conduct some experiments on it's users by manipulating the status update feed that they were able to see, The idea being to test the reaction of users to seeing mostly positive, or mostly negative feeds.
All a bit 1984 is the cliched response that fits nicely here - and a small step (or a few decades) from the plot-line of the Terry Gilliam film, Brazil.
The idea was to see if users that were shown happier posts posted more positive posts themselves as a result - and vice versa with negative news feed posts.
This doesn't directly affect me as I always view the most recent posts/updates rather than "top stories" - which Facebook defaults users to on every platform. Although they are making it more and more difficult with every Android update (I guess it's the same with iPhone?) to make sure you don't see what Facebook wants you to see.
Facebook's last but one Android update made it even harder for smart phone users to see most recent updates, go to our website to find out how to see most recent updates on Facebook.
Make Use Of provided recently a list of plugins/filters to allow you to see most recent status updates on Facebook in a handy article too. You can read that here.
They provide a few options, including the Friendcaster app. I've not tested this as yet and at present, while our solution to see most recent news stories on Facebook still works, I don't fancy having another app on top of Facebook accessing my details as well. Who knows what the future will bring though.
Indeed, maybe now their big experiment is over (let's hope it is!) they will now start to allow users to see their news feed flow as they wish to - that is most recent rather than top stories.
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