Another Facebook “social experiment,” one which took place in 2012, saw the social-media company quietly manipulate users’ feeds, inserting more hard news, which apparently spurred more of the “subjects” to vote. The results are interesting, the methods dubious. From Micah L. Sifry at Mother Jones:

“Facebook has studied how changes in the news feed seen by its users—the constant drip-drip-drip of information shared by friends that is heart of their Facebook experience—can affect their level of interest in politics and their likelihood of voting. For one such experiment, conducted in the three months prior to Election Day in 2012, Facebook increased the amount of hard news stories at the top of the feeds of 1.9 million users. According to one Facebook data scientist, that change—which users were not alerted to—measurably increased civic engagement and voter turnout. 

Facebook officials insist there’s nothing untoward going on. But for several years, the company has been reluctant to answer questions about its voter promotion efforts and these research experiments. It was only as I was putting the finishing touches on this article that Facebook started to provide some useful new details on its election work and research.

So what has Facebook been doing to boost voter participation, and why should anyone worry about it?”