Collecting Data from Facebook

This recent article in the NY Times discusses how academic researchers are studying behavior on Facebook.

What do you think of this article? Is it fair for people to be studied when they don't know it? How does this differ from the APA Ethics code for observing people in their day-to-day environments? How can we balance what we learn from the risks we take? (You may need to look up the APA ethics code to answer some of these questions!)

You may need to register for the NY Times the first time you read an article. I recommend that you do because 1) it's free and 2) we're going to be using them as a source quite a bit throughout the semester.