In light of the ongoing controversy around Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Study, artist and programmer Lauren McCarthy created a Google Chrome extension that allows you to manipulate your own timeline using the same algorithm used in the study, Beta Beat reports.
Facebook Mood Manipulator allows you to adjust the levels of “positive, emotional, aggressive and open” feelings you’d like to see in your feed, and makes those changes by analyzing the language used in posts, just like in the study. This could be useful for when you’re too depressed to see anything but photos of kittens or when you need to validate how terrible the world is. Aside from its parody of brand manipulation, the app exposes our own desire to selectively view things that please us at the moment, something that’s worried technology critics for a long time. On the plus side, Facebook’s already proven your adjustments will have statistically significant effects on your mood. Time to crank up the positivity.
