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Facebook took out and changed certain emotional words on the newsfeeds of almost 700,000 users to see if their mood changed. They watched to see if statuses or normal Facebook habits changed. When the news hit this week that they did this, people were pretty upset that their newsfeeds were getting messed with (unshocker). Were YOU part of the experiment?

Well, you wouldn’t even know because Facebook never told or asked permission from the users they manipulated. How crazy is that?

Facebook hid certain emotional words from 689,003 newsfeeds, which is about .04% of all Facebook users. When confronted, Facebook defended its actions by saying “it’s important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out.” For example, if you saw a close friend posting exciting and fun statuses about what they were doing, this would change your mood. 

This got us thinking: We normally don’t consider what effect our friends’ status, pictures and videos have on us. But, apparently status does matter—Facebook found out people’s emotions were changed by what they saw happening on their newsfeed.

So, what do you think of what Facebook did? And do you think what you read on Facebook changes your mood? Tell us in the comments below.

by Gabrielle Klebanow | 2/1/2016