Feb 9, 2015

The Trust Engineers

When we talk online, things can go south fast. But they don’t have to. Today, we meet a group of social engineers who are convinced that tiny changes in wording can make the online world a kinder, gentler place. So long as we agree to be their lab rats.

Okay, yeah, we’re talking about Facebook. Because Facebook—or something like it—is more and more the way we share and like and gossip and gripe. And because it's so big, Facebook has a created a laboratory of human behavior the likes of which we’ve never seen. We peek into the work of Arturo Bejar and a team of researchers who are tweaking our online experience bit by bit to try to make the world a better place. And along the way, we can’t help but wonder whether that’s possible, or even a good idea.

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