Currently, that trough of data is collected at Facebook's expense
Expense? FB sees enough reason to throw hardware, software and time at collecting that data anyway, and use it in ways that makes them money.
and presented with no additional cost. Quite a difference between then and now.
Another difference is that a social environment like FB simply didn't exist in the seventies. So the researchers were studying interactions that were different from the online environment now, and obviously had to use different methods to select and question their subjects.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
