Corpus 2

Seconded.

If the T&Cs change over time, and one of the terms is that they'll just be updated and it is a user's responsibility to keep up with what changes have been made, then clear information needs to be given on ALL topics on the forum that anything users commit to posting on them may be used for other purposes until posters ask for their deletion. Whether the data harvesters are adhering to the Ts and Cs that applied when the user posted, or not, some years later, and potentially, in conflict with the Ts and Cs that users assumed they were happy to accept at the time they posted.

Also that everyone must be compliant (at least) and cautious (as a sensible measure) about minors' data, I assume, due to the safeguarding stuff inherent in that - as may happen on a website that claims to be aimed at parents as a very key user group.

My head hurts already, trying to see what logic is fraying there.

@JustineMumsnet No. That's not good enough. If you're happy to acept any thieving, data scraping, woman hating postgrad getting there grubby mitts on MY data wenever they feel like it id like you to delete every post I've made under every name I've used. This might not have any effect on the Aston thieves but will stop any further illegal use.
I'm not sure if I have posted anything identifying and it would have a deleterious effect on me if I'm ID'ed.
If you want to pass the buck to us it will affect your ability to attract advertising because so many of us will be silenced. If you don't take responsibility for this I don't want to contribute to your advertising revenue. Try monetising your forum when it looks like a swiss cheeze.

I wonder if Free Speech Union might be interested in this.

I daresay a few Mumsnetters may be members.

Most definitely not my finest work

Impromptu Poem

erm...

Bugger the words aren't there
To say just how we feel
About the Aston data scrape
But we did do something real.

We created t shirts towels and bags
Put them on a website too
We sold them to the other hags
Cos we think Aston's poo!

https://grimut-gerbils.teemill.com/product/corpus-souvenir/

https://grimut-gerbils.teemill.com/

everything that can be considered creative work.

Given thr MN fondness for impromptu poetry, that should be a lot of posts off limits - enough to prevent auto-scraping.

I found this interesting:

https://oxylabs.io/blog/is-web-scraping-legal

So, is web scraping activity legal or not? It is not illegal as such. There are no specific laws prohibiting web scraping, and many companies employ it in legitimate ways to gain data-driven insights.

However, there can be situations where other laws or regulations may come into play and make web scraping illegal. For example:

1. Your web scraper should not log in to websites or web pages and then download data. By logging in to any website, users have to agree to the Terms of Service (ToS), which may forbid activity like automated data collection.

2. There is a misconception that you can do whatever you want with publicly available data. While there may be fewer restrictions for scraping publicly available data – as opposed to private information – you still have to ensure that you are not breaching laws that may apply to such data.

One example would be downloading copyrighted data. Usually, it includes designs, layouts, articles, videos, and everything that can be considered creative work.

Well, the Mumsnet logo is certainly copyright protected. Surely all the written material can also be considered to be creative work, too?

Aston initially said that they wanted to cross reference, in order to identify users on other sites, didn't they? Would that not count as doxxing? It's not generally illegal in the UK, unless there's malicious intent or result, such as harassment of a poster.

@TokyoBouncyBall If we are going to get any sort of advice from any of the lawyers from Legal Feminist (these include Naomi Cunningham, Anya Palmer, Audrey Ludwig - and possibly more) we will need to have some funds, and someone prepared to collect funds and instruct lawyers, and this probably needs to be done under their real name.

AFAIK AL works exclusively from a law centre in Suffolk, so may not be able/willing to be instructed for this. I think NC accepts public access - i.e. where members of the public can instruct a barrister directly. Not sure re AP.

There is also that data lawyer who commented on AL tweets who may be able to help. I can't remember his name, but he was from Mishcon de Reya. (I wonder whether someone who specialises in data/data protection may actually be the best bet here? There is plenty of precedent to demonstrate that expressing GC views is (1) lawful, and (2) not transphobic by default, whether the team at Aston understand that or not. The interesting/more complicated question here is "what right(s) do we have to prevent our data being used in this way?" I'm sure there are more questions, but that seems to be the starting block.)

Previous papers (at least the one I read) had sought consent from individual users as well as Mumsnet, spent a lot of time carefully considering impact and ethics.

A wholly different kettle of fish, imo.

"No, they cannot delete all the studies using the original dataset as some of these are published. The findings (including those published) will have helped with developing further work and funding which Aston has benefited from."

Highly influential and well-cited papers absolutely do get retracted, a recent example was in today's Times:

"Alzheimer’s study pulled over data tampering"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0c115c01-1e8b-4245-b211-041f2c839820?shareToken=8fbf97d8001e993e80d76b190bdd4b1a

Retraction Watch:
https://retractionwatch.com/

I noted a while back that this "PhD" will require a lot of padding and this would likely be in the form of quote/examples. If direct quotes can not be used, how is she going to frame the examples? Using @Boiledbeetle's example above, I don't think just changing the pronouns to third person will cut it.

"She'd come home early from a week away with the kids as one broke his arm and found her husband in the bedroom in her knickers and bra and great aunt violets wedding dress with her best makeup smeared all over his face when he was supposed to be at a work conference in Scunthorpe".

Still pretty outing for a real life poster.

Everyone will just ‘know’ wink wink that it’s the nasty wimmin from MN that are transphobic and need to learn their place and to stfu.

I agree. I was thinking that MN women ought to be told more clearly that absolutely anyone researchers actively scrape data off MN and use it to twist into whatever theses they want to in the very worst of confirmation bias.

MN may well point out that journalists troll these threads for stories all the time, but this ‘research’ and I use the word with a great deal of caution, is another ominous and intrusive level altogether.

It is a bloody shame because academics are, in effect, silencing women’s concerns. Better than any TRAs efforts going.

In a f2f encounter or exchange of comments online there’s the opportunity to challenge and correct other’s interpretations of what you’re saying. Here, Eden gets the last authoritative word and to present this at a conference and publish in a journal despite the many many methodological problems pointed out here.

Like others, I will rename myself though I’ve kept the same user name since starting and rethink my degree of posting. Breaks my heart really at the thought of women in their most vulnerable and troubled times not having a place to turn to, but what else can be done?

I am astounded @JustineMumsnet that you accepted Aston’s ‘conditions’ allowing Eden to keep and use the scraping of our data.

And telling us that our only recourse is to publically out ourselves to Aston, that hotbed of feminist thought, or complain to the ICO when Eden broke MNs terms and conditions is really rather shocking. So it’s our problem now?

In essence, this is allowing our voices to be misrepresented and misinterpreted. We know that Eden believes sex realists/pro women / gender critical voices are transphobic (a hate crime in Scotland) because Eden says so right in the title of Eden’s talk. Leaving no right of reply, no response, no correction of Eden’s absolute bias in reading comments. Free to indulge in full confirmation bias whilst cherry picking the quotes that justify Eden’s thesis.

They are also adamant that this data set has been anonymised. I also hope that as someone running a platform you immediately told them that is a bullshit claim as you both know that no online data can be anonymised.

How is calling it transphobia not defamatory? I've never seen transphobia on here. Just sex realist views.

Eden could be one of our ploppers who comes in with outrageous words trying to provoke a response and is then deleted. Given the lack of ethics across the whole process, this sort of behaviour definitely isn't outside the bounds of possibility

These people really think they're above the law. The data protection laws, copyright, defamation and all the many, many court cases showing that sex realist or GC views are WORIADS. They're dangerous. And somehow MN are rolling over. Not in the spirit at all.

People in Relationships need to know. Women need to know their words, at possibly the worst point in their life, will be scraped and used elsewhere with no control over that - they can get MN to delete it later but presumably none of these deletions will carry over. Some abusive men will spend years stalking and trying to find their victims to kill them, the idea that this might not be dangerous is ludicrous.

I'm going to guess money from Aston to MN is in the offing. Let's face it our words are very valuable.

Whilst I'm not going to flounce, I am dfe and name and email changing. I will stay on fwr, but post much less. I dont mind them making money, it's a business after all, I do mind that they aren't telling the whole site. So that people can make up their minds on what to post, knowing it's going to be in a phd.

No, they cannot delete all the studies using the original dataset as some of these are published. The findings (including those published) will have helped with developing further work and funding which Aston has benefited from.

The argument is about precedent, it seems to me, precisely the point at the end of your second paragraph. If they can use a small section of the boards for this PhD and are not legally challenged, they (and others like them) can do similar in the future for other work.

They are trying to retrospectively get permission by offering concessions on the way the data is published in the final thesis, but as far as I understand it, this is not agreed by MN. It’s what Aston are saying they will do.

The irony of Chatham House Rules to inspire confidence and let women talk openly at Aston.

I suspect they'd rinsed the original dataset of all its usefulness by the point they agreed to delete it in the hope that would satisfy the powers that be at mumsnet. Seems to have worked for them though.

Did they agree to delete all the studies and findings they generated from that original dataset as well? I can't remember. If they didn't then not having by now very old information want going to harm them at all. After all they can just scrape it again anytime they want it seems.

The fact that they deleted the first one actually swings more in it being right that they should also bin Edens data sets. They set the precedent by deleting the first one.

Sorry, my question was unclear. I meant in the eyes of MN &/or of Aston, why does one data scrape have to be deleted but the other does not? If the 'sandbox' has to go, why doesn't the PhD one also have to go?

Surely this is going to be even worse for Eden and Aston without them being able to name mumsnet. It's just going to be so ridiculous. "Yes it's a very scientific totally ethical paper. But we are banned from saying where we stole the data from".

Who is going to have faith in something that uses a data source that no one can check as you've been forced to hide the source of the data as you pissed off the site owners when you stole all their data.

Day of the presentation

So I've got this information from a site I've been banned from naming and I'll be assuming loads of things about the posters then discarding threads that don't fit my end goal then I'll be making it all so unidentifiable that no one can identify anything from a string of more than three words, even though my university can't be trusted with personal data of its own students

Questions?

Yes I know it said mumsnet on the original timetable, but I'm now banned from saying mumsnet so i can't tell you where i got this totally unidentifiable data from.