>I think people on HN generally have a good understanding of what A/B testing is
Not only do I not believe this, as most people on HN tend to have a very superficial understanding of whatever tech is being discussed, there is always a dismissal of any social consequences that may happen as a result of using any kind of technology.
>I have trouble imagining a realistic scenario in which the act of running a comparison test makes it unethical.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You don't need any kind of testing framework for a few famous examples to satisfy your "realistic" qualification. I see a lot of bland contrarian stuff on HN, but I'm kind of speechless right now.
I'm entirely serious. To cite one of the most famous examples, Facebook ran a sort of A/B test where its algorithm was adjusted to attempt to make users happy or sad.
There's a fairly strong case to be made that intentionally making a large number of people sad just to see if you can is unethical. There's a somewhat weaker case to be made that manipulating the happy group was also an unethical distortion of their reality. I fail to see an ethical problem with the fact that it was an A/B comparison. Instead, A and probably B would be unethical to attempt under any conditions without consent.
Not only do I not believe this, as most people on HN tend to have a very superficial understanding of whatever tech is being discussed, there is always a dismissal of any social consequences that may happen as a result of using any kind of technology.
>I have trouble imagining a realistic scenario in which the act of running a comparison test makes it unethical.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You don't need any kind of testing framework for a few famous examples to satisfy your "realistic" qualification. I see a lot of bland contrarian stuff on HN, but I'm kind of speechless right now.