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user-inactivated  ·  3438 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I did an informal study about Hubski

Woah. Hey. Wait a minute now. I'm curious, what's with the strong, negative reaction?

What he did, at least from what I understand, doesn't seem that outrageous. All he did was really an observational experiment, seeing how following certain people or certain tags would affect what information he's exposed to. It doesn't sound like he actually did anything that would actually affect either A) the behavior of the people he was observing or B) the dynamics of the website.

Should he maybe of said "Hey, I have an idea that I want to try out! Let me know what you think."? Yeah. Probably. To be fair though, this is probably the most benign experiment I've seen in a while.