There’s an adage that’s particularly relevant in today’s world of “free” technology: If you aren’t paying for a product, you are the product.” And nothing highlights this better than a recent study by Facebook that manipulated users’ news feeds to show mostly bad news.

The study with Cornell and UCSF was published June 17, and revealed that Facebook alterned nearly 700,000 users’ news feeds to see how they respond to a deluge of negativity. The study was authored by members of Facebook’s core data science team, UCSF’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and Cornell’s Communication and Information Science department.

The meat of the study can be found in these excerpts:
For people who had positive content reduced in their News Feed, a larger percentage of words in people’s status updates were negative and a smaller percentage were positive.

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Two things to take away from this: Facebook took away positive content in news feeds. Ever wonder why all you hear about is bad news? It’s not just your imagination. It’s actually being manipulated to achieve that result. Secondly, the less positivity users saw, the less they spread. Bad news breeds bad moods.

When negativity was reduced, the opposite pattern occurred.

Ok, that’s pretty self explanatory, but still very telling—take away the bad news and people talk about more positive things.

These results suggest that the emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods…

How many times have you experienced anger, sadness, happiness, nervousness or any other emotion based on something from Facebook? I don’t think this concept needed a scientific paper to prove, but, hey, here it is.

…constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks.

The word “contagion” here is a leading word to the idea of things “going viral” online. It’s not just videos, photos, websites or products that go viral, real human emotions do, too.

This is a telling study, and will undoubtedly be used in some new-age guru’s next self-awareness book, but it’s also a little creepy and invasive for those who trusted the Palo Alto company to provide social interaction on their own terms, not the company’s. It’s also dangerous—when entire revolutions are built around social media, as was the case with the Arab Spring, what if the social media companies push certain attitudes by selective processing? What if negative posts with the phrase “Muslim Brotherhood” were deleted from just 5 percent of all posts in a given region?

Of course, Facebook wouldn’t do that. But what if the U.S. Government asked them to perform another “social experiment?” It’s a slippery slope.

• Nicolas Grizzle
• Teens show support for Andy Lopez at a protest at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office earlier this year.

A rumor that a decision on the fate of Sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus is imminent is false, says Terry Menshek, media coordinator of the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office.

Widespread emails and internet chatter said a press conference was scheduled for today at noon that would say whether charges would be filed against the deputy, who shot and killed 13-year-old Andy Lopez on October 22 last year when the boy’s toy AK-47 rifle was mistaken for a real gun. “I’ve gotten a dozen calls, there was a rumor going around. It even got as far as Los Angeles,” says Menshek. “There was never one scheduled,” adding that this is the second time such a rumor has been started.

A timetable has not been set for an announcement on the case. “It’s still under investigation,” she says.

Santa Rosa City Manager Kathy Millison sent an email Thursday to Santa Rosa City Council members and staff members about community outreach regarding the DA’s announcement. The email details actions the city has taken in preparation of demonstrations surround the announcement and gives talking points to highlight when addressing the incident.

In the email, Millison says, “We don’t know when that may occur and we’ll learn of it at the same time as everyone in the community learns of it.” But in a handout sent as an attachment to that email, one of the assigned roles of the internal action plan is for the city manager to “email talking points to council as soon as decision is released.”

Jonathon Melrod, an attorney working with the Justice For Andy Lopez group, says a press conference was scheduled for noon today by the DA’s office, but cancelled at the last minute. He says he doesn’t know what the subject of the press conference was supposed to be, but that it likely had to do with a decision on Gelhaus. “The whole thing is bizarre to me,” he says.

Protocol in officer-involved shootings is to make an announcement regarding charges 90 days after the incident, which in this case happened on October 22. Critics say District Attorney Jill Ravitch was waiting until after the June 3 election, which she won by a wide margin. “She can’t keep waiting,” says Melrod.

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Gelhaus returned to work, albeit at a desk job, in December. The Santa Rosa Police Department, which is investigating the incident, issued its report to the DA’s office in January.

City Hall is closed today and the Santa Rosa Police Department did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

The talking points Millison gave include empathy, safety and information about the SRPD’s role in the investigation. “We encourage demonstrators to express their emotions while staying safe,” says the handout.

Santa Rosa City Councilman Gary Wysocky says he doesn’t know when an announcement will be made. “I won’t get advance notice,” he says via email. “I do not know who requested the talking points for the council.”

The coho salmon run in Marin County is bafflingly high this year. In a drought-stricken season with water being diverted from fish habitats to agriculture, this year’s estimate of nearly 20,000 juvenile salmon made up the largest migration from Lagunitas Creek since the annual exodus started being recorded in 2006, according to estimates by the Marin Municipal Water District.

“We are a little bit skeptical,” says George Neillands, biologist with the Department of Fish and wildlife, “because it’s an estimate.” He said the low water flow could throw off the count because fewer fish can avoid the trap, since there’s less room to swim around them. “We take it with a grain of salt until we can really evaluate and review it,” he says.

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Coho are born in freshwater rivers, living for over a year before swimming to sea. This year’s late rains trapped the young salmon in small tributaries until after the larger fish, who had returned to spawn, finished their business and returned to the sea. Normally the creek can’t hold more than about 11,000 fish, and the smaller ones are chased away and washed out to sea.

Despite that, the number of redds (egg clusters) was down from the 20-year average. Only 206 were counted in the Lagunitas watershed, far less than the 250 average. That has to do with the drought, says Neillands, but also to do with fish survival from years prior.

If the count is accurate, it means there might be a stronger returning class in future years. But the average fish size is down, says Neillands. “That equates in the ocean to probably not as good survival,” he says. “In the ocean, size matters a lot for fish survival.”

But even still, the endangered coho aren’t out of the woods yet. This year’s forecast El Niño storms could wreak havoc on the fish, but the strength of the weather phenomenon is tough to predict. With warmer water comes tropical species from the south and less food for the salmon. “It’s a different strata of fish species out there, and it doesn’t support as much food for them,” says Neillands.