Comment by panic
5 years ago
Facebook employees want you to be a happy, healthy Facebook Family of Apps™ user. But Facebook as an emergent entity of its own has "wants" which can be hard to see from the inside. Facebook employees don't actually know what happens between each individual user and their Facebook account. You can do user studies, or gather aggregate metrics, but any technique you might use will obscure what's really happening in one way or another. And the whole internal idea of what is happening will naturally be bent toward what helps Facebook survive. In particular, it's very important that what Facebook employees are encouraged to imagine as positive change is not damaging to Facebook itself, or the company will eventually die.
Thanks for the reply.
It's true that Facebook the company is an emergent entity, and that the companies behavior and "wants" don't necessarily match those of its employees.
I disagree with the claim that "any technique you might use will obscure what's really happening in one way or another."
RCTs that measure self-reported wellbeing and other engagement-independent measures of mental health do not obscure what's really happening. Techniques like this could be used to actively improve user health, even at a cost to engagement.