this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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A/B testing without consent is unethical. This doesn’t fly in any scientific fields, yet the technology industry doesn’t think twice about experimenting on users without consent.
Swapping two tabs in an SPA, how fucking unethical
I think it's a bit of a stretch to consider A/B testing under the same umbrella as subjecting somebody to a scientific study. A/B testing can be selling different products in different stores or trying different pricing strategies. There are certainly shady things you can do with A/B testing, like trying out dark patterns, but require consumers give consent for any kind of market experimentation?
Yeah, it depends on the potential adverse impact. On a web app that does nothing significant, it doesn't matter. If life and limb are at risk, or someone's money, that's different. And if it's a bug fix, you need to consider the consequences of not fixing it too.
There is a research paper on this topic here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-023-09644-y
What a load of bollocks.
Nobody owes you anything, especially if it's a free service. And A/B testing is pretty much the only way to get reliable results on how a feature may shape user experience.
Or would you rather companies just delivered features without any care how it affects users?