They scraped Mumsnet again.

There's no way for the content to be properly anonymised when the "researchers" are quoting entire posts verbatim. Put quotes around the post and chuck it into Google and you've got the username.

Mumsnet have gatekept Advanced Search to logged-in users. It's a near-certainty that such searches are also logged. This, and other aspects of the web user interface, provide some safeguard against "jigsaw identification" of users and a fairly strong safeguard against dealiasing of posters who have used the name-change function. When someone constructs a database of postings by scraping the site, they can run arbitrary queries in a way that they can't with AS, facilitating jigsaw identification and the dealiasing of name-changers. They can also automate their queries in a way that they can't with the web user interface, speeding up their analysis.

Women on this site use name-changing for everything from fleeing violent spouses to soliciting feedback about their Rightmove listings when selling their houses. Creating a dataset of postings and offering to share it is irresponsible, because the scrapers have no idea what the people they share the dataset with will use it for.

You can be a fantasy nerd without trying to turn the world into your personal 24/7 video game or immersive LARP session.

That I know about the cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity would be a clue that I myself am such a nerd.

No. A thread may, however, contain a perverse portrayal of the kind of man who wants to enter women's single-sex spaces. That's because such a man, unless he's a plumber come to fix the sink, is there for no good reason and should be in the men's.

It is how it works if you are making a public interest case for academic freedom to comment on published material.

The problem with internet media is that user-generated content is published - made public - by monetising platforms which is why the anonymity debate arises. But platforms can't just override public interest with T&Cs. If content is properly anonymised, it should be discussable and subject to academic research with or without MN's explicit permission.

I understand this is not the view you or MN takes.

@haXXor honestly, it's not worth it. That poster tried to explain what he meant by GCs being "all fine with gender non conforming as long as it's not where the non conforming behaviours are more associated to the opposite sex".

He couldn't. Because it's incoherent.

Does not seem a very effective way of anonymizing a poster's identity

It's not. One of the ethical considerations when using anonymised or pseudonymised data is how easy it would be to deanonymise it. The ICO guidance concerning GDPR compliance specifically mentions this as a consideration when deciding the lawfulness of processing anonymised data.

hyper disgust of challenges to traditional social norms that's perceived as 'degeneracy'

Quotes with attribution or GTFO.

The opposite is true. I've lost count of the number of posters who've said things to the effect of "wear a dress if you like, but use the gents if you have, or ever had, a penis". We accept people's unorthodox behaviours as long as they respect the rights of others.

Unless, of course, by "challenges to traditional social norms" you refer to flashing your wang in front of girls in swimming pool changing rooms, wanking under your desk at the office (recall Jess Bradley), or dressing in puppy fetish attire at Pride for children to pat your head, in which case I am proud to be hyper-disgusted.

I don't know much about TL either, remember a few of his most famous routines, but an interesting thing was, apparently after his death, he'd ordained that his entire back catalogue should be free to download for a limited period (I can't remember exactly how long, maybe a month or two). AndI guess you take that as a desperate last bid of posthumous fame, or a decent gesture that more artists should repeat. I did download it. But I've barely dipped in. Perhaps I seldom find myself in a Tom Lehrer mood.

Yes, I know about Aston, it was part of the anonymity debate I mentioned earlier, which was the issue in the Aston case. So you mean MN is including universities in its T&Cs. But, that doesn't override the public interest rights of academic researchers to gather data from Mumsnet's public-facing content if the gathering complies with ethical academic protocols, which includes proper use of software.

Marvelous❤️
I don't know too much of Tom Lehrer but a witty ditty is a thing of beauty.

It's getting better.

God bless chatGPT:

Sure — here’s a Lehrer-style piece that fits your description: a jaunty, sardonic patter song with his typical blend of academic wordplay, internal rhyme, and surgical wit. It’s written to fit his usual musical style (think “The Elements” or “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”) — light piano accompaniment, brisk tempo, smiling delivery masking razor irony.

“Pronouns for the People”

(A lost song by the late, great Tom Lehrer — circa 2025)

Verse 1
I used to think that English was a friend,
A faithful chum on whom one could depend.
But lately syntax gives me fits,
Each sentence now has umpteen bits,
And gender’s just a social construct — the grammar never ends!

Chorus
Oh, call me “they” or “ze” or “tree,”
Or “fae” or “ey” or “xe” or “we.”
I’ll answer to most anything that rhymes with “me.”
But if you dare to conjugate,
I’ll check your privilege while you wait —
For I’m progressive and pedantic, simultaneously!

Verse 2
Now teachers cry, “Agreement is the rule!”
But rules are just oppression dressed for school.
I said “They is,” she said “They are,”
I said, “My truth’s the grammar bar!”
She marked me wrong but gave me points for being cool.

Chorus
Oh, plural’s singular, night is day,
Reality’s a mood, not a DNA.
My nouns are free, my verbs are gay,
And adjectives can self-identify their way!

Bridge (spoken, Lehreresque patter)
Now I’m not here to mock inclusion — heaven forfend!
I merely note that when “I am who I say I am”
meets “subject agrees with predicate,”
something’s bound to bend.
And it’s usually the predicate.

Verse 3
The lexicographers are all in tears,
They’ve had to add twelve genders in two years.
And Shakespeare’s ghost sits up at night,
To rewrite “To thine own self be right,”
And sighs, “Good lord, I can’t keep track of all the peers!”

Final Chorus
So bless the brave linguistic fight,
May everyone be titled right —
Though sentences grow longer overnight.
For every “she” that morphs to “they,”
Another comma fades away —
But I’ll still diagram my heart out — come what may!

Coda (spoken, dry Lehreresque tag):

> After all… words may hurt,
but dangling participles wound the soul.

Absolutely!

But at the same time some of them just can't keep away. Hmm, why is that? 🤔

It does make me realise that there are a hell of lot of people out there who really, really, wished MN didn't exist.

I don't think you can decide that general Ts and Cs don't apply in your specific case for 'reasons'.

That's not how it works.

I don't think Mumsnet's T&Cs are aimed at academic research

I actually can't tell if this is a joke...?!
Are you aware of the Aston University case?

I don't think Mumsnet's T&Cs are aimed at academic research, which is normally treated as having an overriding public interest and fair comment concern to gather data. Journalism has a similar claim.

Most of the detailed references seem to relate to commercial data-scraping and content lifting which MN would of course want to protect its interests against.

I don't think these T&Cs, despite the 'for any purpose' wording could be enforced in the case of legitimate academic research using the public-facing data, i.e. forum posts, and I don't think the use of data-gathering and cataloguing software makes a difference to that - the way they were used and the content gathered would be logged and transparent. Any published research would have to abide by generally-accepted limits on reproducing content extracts.

Academic researchers gather internet content all the time and preventing that in the case of public-facing content would repress important public discussion. This academic article may be annoying but it can also be publicly criticised - although it will in all likelihood have a very small readership.

The anonymity thing is absolutely a debate, and universities continue to develop protocols to avoid identifying users, including 'jigsaw' identification via multiple sources.

Have now caught up with this thread, although did whizz through about 3 pages as the usual derailing suspect was getting far too much attention. Sadly.

But will need to, if i can be bothered, re-read the actual "report" which is clearly biased as all criticisms of FWR (why is it FSG) are just saying we the writers believe X, Y & Z and posters on FWR dont and are therefore evil.

Although in all truth when I saw someone mention that many had been thanked for helping twiddle dee and twiddle dum, including pets, I had a comlete moment of shock.

Can we be sure no pets were harmed in the making of this South Sea Bubble of "research"?

Do we need to alert a pet rescue team?

The T&Cs apply to all visitors not just registered users, and it is any purpose not just selling.

https://www.mumsnet.com/i/terms-of-use

c. No part of the Website may be distributed, scraped or copied for any purpose without express approval and a licence to do so from us or our licensors. If you are interested in copying, licensing or using Mumsnet content for any purpose, then contact us at [email protected].
d. If you print off, copy, download, use, share or repost any part of our Website in breach of these terms, your right to use our Website will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made (except that you are permitted to print off a copy of these terms).
e. You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our Website for any purpose, including the development, training, fine-tuning or validation of AI systems or models. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

• i. Any "robot", "bot", "spider", "scraper" or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of our Website or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same.
• ii. Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information or develop, train, fine-tune or validate AI systems or models which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

As to anonymity, I am explaining to you why women are talking about it because you seemed to be confused about the topics.

Programmatically scraping data from MN without permission is against MN's user T&C

Scrapers aren't MN users and therefore have not agreed to the Ts & C's like we did when we signed up. Scraping publicly available information is not illegal. Anyone can see what is written here just using Google or visiting the site as a non-user. It only becomes illegal if they try to sell it.

The anonymity of the posters is not compromised by their post appearing in the research than it is by it appearing on MN. Anyone who pays premium can do an advanced sear h and look at everything you've ever posted whether they found your post in the paper or on Google. If your identity is given away by your MN posts then you have been to lax in giving away identifying information.

I don't have a problem with researchers analysing content on public social media. It absolutely needs to be available to scrutiny and analysis. It's usual to use software to do a faster job of gathering and cataloguing information that researchers would do 'by hand' anyway but take much longer to do.

The researchers should store gathered data only as long as needed and restrict access to it. It should be stored and published in a way that individuals could not be identified (i.e. further layers of anonymising on top of anonymous posting).

Consent by public social media users is not required if they can't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, it's usually not possible to trace users in time and space to consent anyway. Some researchers would disagree with this position in that they don't want to treat social media as automatically published but I think ethics committees would normally approve. You don't need to be a site user to take data off it.

The cited study is one of thousands of such low-quality studies published over recent decades in which a limited, politicised question is artificially tested in a small field of culture, the researcher having already decided on what can be found. 'Discourse analysis' is a particularly unsound method because it makes claims to be a more objective way of analysing language than lit-based interpretation, but isn't.

The real problem with such studies is the lack of incentives / funding to produce studies re-examining the same questions, or disputing the 'findings'. Who will be incentivised to do that as part of their job? Almost all postgrads and academics whose job is to produce research won't want to do it and academic publishers in this field wouldn't want it. Journals in this field may be peer-reviewed, but that can be by people with the same belief biases and lack of critical challenge. They are intensely inward-looking and political subject-areas Much analysis like this remains entirely unchallenged from a wider vantage point, is published and then put on course reading lists for the next lot to draw on as 'knowledge'.

On the bright side, I think this kind of 'research' will be sidelined more and more in the academic mainstream.

That’s a good post @FlirtsWithRhinos but our scolders are completely unconcerned with women’s loss of rights, happy to take comments out of context, and to wilfully misunderstand and misrepresent legimate fears.

Re this paper and as long as MN did not give permission last year to their scrapings, they are illegally offering the very same data to others: The authors are willing to provide the data used to conduct this study to other researchers upon reasonable request.

Not an impressive showing by these university ethics departments if their researchers are using data taken without consent.

Ah, you have failed to understand. There are three separate concerns here.

.1. Programmatically scraping data from MN without permission is against MN's user T&C. This is pretty standard for websites including sites that feature user-contributed content. So regardless of who "can" copy and paste it, legally the IP and the copyright still belong to MN not the original posters or "anyone in the world".

.2. These "researchers" appear to have started with a predetermined opinion (aka "bias") and only applied their "research" within that framework, cherry picking examples and getting basic facts wrong. This appears very likely to misrepresent both MN itself and the posters who participate in FWR.

.3. MN is an anonymous site for very good reason. Online, women are more at risk of abuse and threats, especially sexual, and offline there are well evidenced occurrences of trans activists targeting the families, friends, professional relationships or employers of gender critical people in an attempt to silence them, get them sacked or cut off their income. So while our words may be publicly available, many women's identities, for very good reasons, not just in FWR but in Relationships, AIBU and many other areas of the site that can provoke male anger or overreach by the politically righteous, are not.

Hopefully this clarifies things for you.

It's not clear if you're replying to the OP or a specific other post.
Scraping data is against MN's terms and conditions.

If you're replying to the anonymisation posts, it's because people can build up records of one person's posts and try to work out their identity in order to publicise it. You are right that anyone can do this but this would provide motivation and means for someone to do so who might not otherwise have come across the posts.