A friend shared a story on a website called the “Conservative Post” called “Everyone Who Changed Their Facebook Photos To Rainbow Just Got DUPED.” I’m always curious of what gets my righty friends all worked up so I read it.
Conservative Post got duped
Over a million people changed their facebook profile pictures to a rainbow filter in support of gay marriage.
New reports reveal that the “Celebrate Pride” tool may not have been the best idea…
According to Daily Mail, this tool was actually Facebook’s way of performing psychological testing on their users.
Cesar Hidalgo wrote on Facebook yesterday. “The question is, how long will it take for people to change their profile pictures back to normal.”
Experts say that by setting up the tool, Facebook was able to get an unprecedented insight on how to influence their users.
Nowhere does the Conservative Post tell us who Cesar Hidalgo is (he’s with the MIT Media Lab) and what “the question is” that he’s quoted as asking. Short on facts, I clicked through to the original Daily Mail story. The story by Ellie Zolfagharifard was even more bombastic:
Daily Mail dupes its readers
Did YOU change your Facebook picture to a rainbow flag? Critics claim ‘Celebrate Pride’ tool may be another psychological test
Your Facebook feed is probably looking a little more colourful this week.
In celebration of the Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage, the site is offering users a tool to overlay their profile photos with a rainbow filter.
And it’s proved hugely popular. Within a few hours of the ‘Celebrate Pride’ tool launching, more than a million people changed their profile photos.
But while it may seem like Facebook’s intentions are noble, some people have accused the social network of carrying out another psychological test on its users.
‘This is probably a Facebook experiment!’ said the MIT network scientist Cesar Hidalgo on Facebook yesterday.
‘The question is, how long will it take for people to change their profile pictures back to normal.’
By setting up its own tool to let people filter their profile picture, the concern is that Facebook is able to get an unprecedented insight into how to influence people.
Well, no. This premise sounded seriously fishy, so I took the initiative to look up Mr. Cesar Hidalgo myself. Just as the story said, he has a Facebook account and, lo and behold, here’s the post from which he was quoted:
Cesar Hidalgo jokes about Facebook’s Celebrate Pride feature.
This is probably a Facebook experiment! The question is how long will it take for people to change their profile pictures back to normal. 🙂
You’ll note that later in the comment thread, in response to a reporter’s question, Mr. Hidalgo clearly states that he was joking:
Sure. I assume, you understand I am joking 🙂
So there we have it. The Daily Mail twisted what Mr. Hildago said, knowing it was a joke. It artfully turned this newly-created “critic” into the plural “critics” and then paired this fiction with two-year-old news reports of research Facebook has done in the past. Not only was Mr. Hildago never interviewed, he didn’t express “the concern Facebook is able to get an unprecedented insight into how to influence people.” In fact, it’s not clear whose concern this is, as for all the reader knows the author made it all up.
Voilà, a manufactured story sure to delight anyone embarrassed to have been caught on the wrong side of marriage history this week. At best, shoddy reporting. At worst, passing pure fiction off as fact. Not sure which I find scarier.
As of this writing, the Conservative Press post has been shared 22,605 times. Perhaps it’s not the rainbow-tinted Facebook denizens who’ve been duped?