Apologies I got the date wrong on a previous post I said 2024. The date ranges are below

"The data chosen for analysis must satisfy the following criteria:
• For the ‘time’ analysis, posts and comments will be collected within the boundaries of each of
the three timeframes: (01/01/2008-01/01/2013; 02/01/2013-01/01/2018; 02/01/2018-01/01/2023).
• For the ‘identity’ analysis, posts and comments will discuss one of three transgender identities transgender women, transgender men, and non-binary people). The date the posts were created will be irrelevant.
• Posts and comments consistently must discuss transgender people or transgenderism. The thread will be removed if it significantly diverges from this topic.
• The posts and comments together created at least 30 replies, with any fewer constituting a thread too small to analyse.
• In a selected thread, all comments (and thus participants) will be used in the corpus, unless:

• The comment has been deleted or banned for breaking Mumsnet’s Terms of Service
• The comment was posted after the timeframe for that corpus has ended"

This is the data scraped according to the FOI response

What naughtystep said.

It certainly seems like a move that will make women wheesht.

And it is a disservice to so very many women.

I'm also not happy. We're being accused of transphobia and while we can legally hold gender critical opinions some of us live in Scotland with it's new hate crime legislation. It's not currently clear how implementing that legislation is going to play out for gender critical Scottish women. I for one am extremely uncomfortable about this and feel I very much do now have to wheesht on Mumsnet.

The relationships board, FWR and the LGBT children's board are what she's scraped.

All of which contain a lot of extremely personal - and identifiable - detail.

Well I'm not happy. I'll return under a new name soon, with a whole new email addy. Meantime im dfe. If MN wont do it, I'll do it myself.
It could take a while but I'm ok with that

I can't see how they can put the genie back in the bottle if they allow this to happen. Especially as it's widely known outside of Mumsnet exactly what Aston has done and what Eden is planning on doing.

It does open the site up to any tom Dick or Harry to say well they did it and nothing happened so we will.

And Edens last data set includes 2024 so recent.

And and and so many other things that no doubt other people will add.

I'm too annoyed right now to think coherently!

The relationships board, FWR and the LGBT children's board are what she's scraped.

@JustineMumsnet I really don't think that's a good enough response to be honest. Have Aston confirmed exactly when this smaller set was scraped? If it was after the Ts&Cs of the site were changed to explicitly forbid scraping, then you're setting a precedent that "asking for forgiveness rather than permission" is acceptable to you, which may cause you problems if you want to take action against other scrapers later on. In addition, "not identifying Mumsnet by name in the final publication" is easily subverted - if they describe it as "a UK site by parents for parents", it'll be obvious who that means, particularly if the PhD student involved has said it's about Mumsnet in any presentations they do prior to publication. Plus, anonymising the dataset will not be sufficient if posts are quoted wholesale in the publication, as it's easy to find the original post with a long enough quote. These reassurances do not reassure me in the slightest.

Finally, I'm not sure if you've done this already, but I think each board that has been affected needs a post from Mumsnet HQ explaining what has gone on, what you've done about it, and how they can get their data removed from Aston's dataset.

when we had more information…
Besides agreeing to delete the sandbox, with regard to the smaller Mumsnet dataset for the PHD research, Aston has agreed not to identify Mumsnet by name in the final publication or use the Mumsnet logo. They are also adamant that this data set has been anonymised.

ooh people are not going to be happy!

Can you at least get agreement from them that someone from, mumsnet, or your no doubt highly expensive lawyers, to actually check before publication? Given they couldn't even redact their own students private contract information on the F O I response at don't have any faith in them at all!

Both Newcastle and Manchester Universities are running late with responding to P. Murray's FOI requests. I was hoping for a rather more interesting reply than Aston's effort, sat down with my cup of tea, clicked on my bookmarks....and there's nothing new to read. :(

Yes, this is why it matters what the terms and conditions are and whether data scraping, as has been done here, are part of these (as I understand it, not), and whether MN has given permission for part of the site to be used for this research.

It also matters on what grounds, without such permission, Aston thinks they have legitimate use, despite the content they are lifting being sensitive in nature and concerning children and vulnerable people, when posters cannot possibly have known their words would be used in this way (as it is against the terms and conditions to data scrape and MN, as I understand it at present, has not given permission).

I reported my own post yesterday morning asking about the first paragraph and await a response.

Yeah, that's a license. We retain copyright. MN's copyright is the website and content, separate from User Content. Copyright is quite a complicated beast, right enough.

Coughs...

Actually...

Mumsnet DO OWN our words! We still retain copyright over our own words but Mumsnet also owns the copyright on our words and can use them however they wish in perpetuity 👇

This web site and its contents are copyright Mumsnet, all rights reserved.

By submitting User Content to us, simultaneously with such posting you automatically grant to us a worldwide, fully-paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, fully sublicensable, and transferable right and license to use, record, sell, lease, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works based upon (including, without limitation, translations), publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, publish and otherwise exploit the User Content (in whole or in part) as Mumsnet, in its sole discretion, deems appropriate. We may exercise this grant in any format, media or technology now known or later developed for the full term of any copyright that may exist in such User Content.

MN don't own our words, we retain copyright but - I assume - we grant a license for Mn to use them when we use the site. I'd need to reread the t&Cs.

MN users are the content providers; our words are the product.

Interesting. I’m glad I’m not paying to be a premium member with stuff like this.

It’s mildly amusing though. Like the AI used to summarise reviews like on Amazon:

’Posters agree that the drive-blocking neighbour is a cheeky fucker, OP should block him in, and a diagram is required. That said, opinions are mixed on helpful rugby team moving it, accidental-on-purpose scratching and penguin bollards.’

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7201199204860391425/

I know that if we post on Mumsnet, you 'own' our words. But this kind of thing, in the context of the whole Aston University palaver, really worries me.

We have, as users, no idea what threads you're deciding to use for this.

@JustineMumsnet
Please can you confirm that the dataset scraped for the PhD is not within your terms and conditions and that you have not given permission for it to be used? This is what I understand the position to be, but I would like to be sure.

Just wondering if there's a timeline for any updates on this, @JustineMumsnet?

An interesting article on data scraping and its effect on the arts:

https://thecritic.co.uk/ai-and-the-great-data-robbery/

😂
He is a rather gorgeous dog. And very well loved. But the butt of all jokes is the bloody insurance premium!

So identifiable individual posters who did not give consent ( Glinner, Sarah P, DNK, Jo P and others) could all sue Aston for copyright breach, defamation and data breaches under DPA / GDPR?

Maybe we need to crowdfund.

For those posters (e.g. Glinner) who posted as an identifiable human, isn't the term 'linguistic transphobia' actual libel / defamation by Aston?

Yes I agree about the hate crimes bit. After it has been published, and the mumsnet quotes are searchable easily on the search function to link to the username, what happens then?

As Aston think an actual crime has happened, do the police get involved and ask mumsnet for the real identity of the poster? If Aston think they’ll uncover crimes surely there is a moral duty to go to police before it’s even published? Otherwise it’s withholding evidence is it not? Or is the hate crime only a crime if the named victim says it is? In which case, the most likely named people to get notified are celebrities who can complain to police. I don’t know enough about hate crime but it all sounds the wrong way round - if you know crimes are being committed.

Obviously if they can’t find any hate crime then the research title is going to look silly. And there are lots of posters who are trying to stir things up on the feminist board so if they ‘catch’ one of those or even a poster who then says their posts were just a wind-up, surely that negates the research too after the fact? The only way of ensuring the crime has been committed is to put the criminal before court. So convictions need to come first, surely?

.