Another data scrape from academia

Thanks from me also Justine. I also know that posters who mention their industry/profession (like GPs, lawyers, academics, teachers) can feel additionally vulnerable when they mention this in bona fide to give advice freely, but are then held up as an example of a "bigoted teacher, hope my children are never taught by them" and again, due to the pseudonymous nature of the site, can have additional worries about data scraping.

Thanks Justine

Also adding my thanks.

lol

Ignore that post ^ I meant to post that comment on the other thread in FWR.

Adding here though for clarification that on the Aston’s scraping thread, @JustineMumsnet said the following:

To clarify your second point, the recent changes to our pay/consent model don’t alter or weaken Mumsnet’s data protections in any way. Third parties cannot access user data without explicit permission. Thanks.

So unless MN gave permission, this data scraping was against T&Cs and therefore unethical. Academics are meant to uphold research ethics. In fact, most ethic committees are very stringent. At least for RG.

PB Berge (they/she) is a media scholar, game designer, and the director of the Discord Academic Research Community. Their research falls at the intersection of trans game studies (especially tabletop roleplaying games and gaming fandoms) and feminist platform studies (specifically toxic technoculture and cross-platform dynamics).

Now I understand why so many young autistic males are falling prey to gender ideology as it seems ideologists inhabit Discord and Twitch and proselytise on those platforms.

The lead author seems to be at the University of Alberta. I checked their ethics pages and I would imagine they are relying on the exemptions in my screenshot.

Canadian researchers tie themselves in knots squaring the circle on seeing themselves as ethical on all matters and yet seemingly content to scrape data against the T&Cs of the site.

We can look forward to these misrepresented ‘findings’ being used to support another PhD closer to home. Sigh.

Interestingly, both the U.K. Research Integrity Office and the ESRC refer to the Association of Internet Researchers as a source for ethical guidance on using social media and other user generated data in research. I am looking at the AOIRs last report which is dated 2019 (so six years ago during which time I think AI and technology and legal cases have moved on but anyway), i just share this extract as a screenshot as it’s relevant.

It’s a long report and the UKRIO and the ESRC also contain multiple other sources as well as their own points to consider.

My point in sharing this is that it is not MN who have to prove research is unethical or ethical - the responsibilty for this lies with the researchers. Now, we may disagree as to where the line is between ethical and unethical in this case, but I would say it is beyond doubt that researchers need to engage with this question and if they have not sought ethical review, explain why not.

The last mumsnet post on the matter seems to say as much. If you have other information where they proved that is deemed unethical to use information anyone can access from websites, please provide it.

so it seems the data was ethically sourced.

Hahahaha. Yep, not engaging with you any further. You are deliberately on the wind up here.

MNHQ didn't seem to have a rebuttal to it and as far as I can see, the paper was released and still accessible so it seems the data was ethically sourced.

This!

Yes that's where I got the information about the exemptions.

No just a spelling error. Very much UK based and as I said, it seems there are exemptions that allow this. I think that is why some forums and social media groups are closed to the public. You have to be a member and sign terms and conditions to see the content.

You mean the Aston threads? Yes. I don't think you actually understand the UK law on this subject and I'm assuming you are US based too because licence is spelt with a c.

I dont think thats necessary and I don't think you should need a license to mine the data of publicly available posts.

No, I don’t think so.
The Aston thread had some references to excellent and ethical work which drew on MN as its source, as well as links about how to use data on forums like MN ethically.
There is also guidance from the U.K. research council on ethical practice with such materials. It’s not difficult to find best practice guidance.

I know you quoted my post by mistake but for me, it’s about ethical use of material. The second part of my post stated how I personally thought a better analysis of the issues covered on FWR could be approached, or indeed any other topic, but I am not being paid to do this as my job, unlike the lead author of this article. My main point is that I believe that the lead author of the article and the co-author have a professional responsibility to source and use data ethically in line with best practice.

Yes. They posted the screed from ChatGPT and didn’t stop and think ‘what does this really mean?’ and obviously either didn’t care or didn’t look further to understand the line that ChatGPT took from an extreme activist’s writings that activity did not really have any evidence whatsoever to support it. ChatGPT simply regurgigated it as if it was a profound statement when it actually wasn’t if you interrogated the concept