Mumsnet Corpus

[TokyoBouncyBall]

Not a TAAT, but a bit of googling as a result of a now deleted thread has led me to this:

https://fold.aston.ac.uk/handle/123456789/18

I note it says that the License is uncertain. Can you confirm that you have given permission for posts to be used in this way, or is there something that Aston might like to look into?

I note it says Users who wish to access this dataset must make a detailed application to FoLD and the researcher, as well as potentially gain additional agreement from an external organisation before they can be approved for access.

Given one of the uses it is being put to, I think it is a bit dubious to say the least.

This is interesting. An Aston PhD Student back in 2016 did a corpus study on motherhood based on MN posts. They obviously did their due diligence (and then some!): she contacted MN headquarters, chose threads herself, contacted posters directly for permission, left messages about her research up, made it clear that posters can withdraw consent at any point. She felt so strongly that she thanks MN users in her thesis acknowledgement, some by name, for allowing her to use and reproduce their posts. I hope that the MN user who wrote this thesis doesn't mind me quoting this but it's a really stark contrast to the situation today. The last sentence of their acknowledgements thanks [particular users] "whose generous engagement with my research cannot be underestimated in the development of my approach to internet research ethics."

Anyway, interesting how much can change in less than a decade!

We are absolutely not participants.

We have not voluntarily taken part in the research and we have not given informed consent.

Fuck's sake, this was my original understanding but it seemed so..... unethical that I started doubting myself.

In a weird way we should be happy that the PhD student chose to name this forum openly and in a way that would gain the attention of MN users. Think how many more papers might have been covertly published using direct quotes from this database, without any of us realising.

She was female. The data scrapers were male.

It's very typically male to have no respect for women and our boundaries.

And indeed, to neglect to seek consent.

Amazing analysis by MNers, as always.

Whilst I am as fumming as everyone else about the privacy issues and the horrifically disturbing premise etc, I can't get over the bias in the PHD title and the lack of understanding of the FWR board. There is no meaningful analysis to be done when, as previously pointed out, quotes are used prolifically and, possibly most importantly, there are frequent posts by people solely done in order to provide screenshots to show how horrible MN is to "prove" that both sides are as bad as each other. Will AI ever figure that out?

Not to mention that Dittany got forced from MN and had her posts removed, so any analysis of the arc of Gender Critical Feminism on MN (being overly generous with the PHD intention) would have a gaping hole. She was a massive influence on many posters and showed that it was OK for women to speak out, though she was villified across multiple 1000 post threads. (I understand KJK gave a nod to her steadfastness).

In short, the analysis would have been bollocks anyway.

The Adoption section? Fuck me, just when you didn’t think it could get any creepier/more disrespectful Aston go and outdo themselves.

The thing that is making me feel slightly ill, is the numerous posts on here I've read from women who are plucking up the courage to leave their abusive partners. If those are included in the dataset then the potential harms are really quite high.

Surely if this is allowed to stand, there will be no more users of mumsnet. We will all decamp elsewhere. Then the ai bots can have free range of the place.

Im relying on all the rest of you cleverer than me women to let me know enough was/wasn't done, when to leave etc. Because im struggling to keep up.

I've already asked for my posting history to be deleted and I would advise others do the same.

I've just done the same. I had to, there is stuff that if put together with previous names will be identifiable.

I asked for everything deleted up til 1st April this year. And going forward I'll be more circumspect about what I post.

As I mentioned before, this is not just about ethics and GDPR, this is about Human Rights. This is a clear breach of our Human Rights under Article 8 of the ECHR as laid out in the Human Rights Act 1998:

Article 8
Right to respect for private and family life

1Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Even where there is an exception under 2. this must be proportional and minimum necessary. Wholesale scraping of our online correspondence on MN to use as a sand box to play with or to search for evidence of wrong think could not in anyway comply with this.

This isn’t about specific pieces of research - their corpus and all related research must be deleted and retracted. I wouldn’t get caught up in the detail of ethics reviews carried out by Aston, they are irrelevant to our right to privacy from interference by the state (which Aston are)

Will asking MN to delete our complete post history even help though? They've already got all that data saved. We delete now on here but that doesn't delete it elsewhere.
Would Mumsnet have to officially demand deletion of all members data under right to be forgotten on our behalf or would we need to out ourselves to institutions that have proven they do not care about women and risk them doing god knows what with it?

Remember when that woman who worked for Mumsnet abused her position to harass us because she didn't like our views?
Imagine how many like her are at these places.

Women are getting rape threats and death threats for not submitting and for speaking up. Imagine what the tra's would do with our data.

@Winnading but won't they already have an archive of all our posts anyway?

What jumped out to me was are they trying to use ai linguistic tools to create an individual fingerprint as it were of posting style, that they could use across multiple sites, some of which might be less than anonymised, in order to identify people.
We frequently see posters commenting that they "recognise" the posting style when calling out other posters. One can only imagine how much more powerful ai would be at this.

Yes, but assuming they have to delete it (and I cannot see how they can keep it) if in future someone else, like maybe another university scraped it with or without permission (has anyone checked if other universities have done the same? Tell me how to and I'll start looking) then my posts wont be there.

I am gutted, I truly thought naively that posting here would be fine. I hoped my previous experiences would help others. But I know I have a quirky way of writing. It wouldn't be difficult to find me across the internet. Some fwr threads are gonna be bare now.

Agree.
Apart from anything else, they have wholesale copied the forums which is a breach of copyright.
Deleting posts on here stops anyone else using what you have posted for research but it doesn’t stop Aston using their corpus and no doubt it was the expertise gained from using that corpus which led to their 11.3m grant as part of the partnership from the US govt. MN did not consent to this.
I am going to presume that MN have lawyers on this. I don’t think I can ask them to delete all my posting history because I used several different emails and accounts over the years. I also am not sure why I should. It was my life and what I posted because that helped me get through. It’s the events I wish had never happened, not that I posted about them with a reasonable expectation of anonymity. So it comes back to a point earlier that now this anonymity is compromised, then so is a source of support for women.

Unwitting participants?
Unwilling participants?
Either of those terms underlines by itself how unethical this project is.

I agree it is getting more creepy thinking about where this research and analysis is heading. Someone posted here or on the other thread referencing a piece of research using Mumsnet data. The study as I understand it compared posts to identify the style of writing of 'parents' and 'feminists'. As someone else mentioned it's what this information is then used for that is worrying.

It’s inhuman and exploitative.

Yes. Taking those conversations to 'play with' is fucking abhorrent. Abhorrent.

Not just unethical- that could risk womens safety.

I am talking about Aston University - they must delete their database. And retract/cancel all research that made use of it. This isn’t about right to be forgotten. This is about Human Rights. If other universities have done the same then they must delete their data too.

@Winnading

"Some fwr threads are gonna be bare now."

Surely this is what they want?

But how many people will have used the information and published on the internet? Trying to remove every trickle down scrap of information must be nigh on impossible.

This is one of the biggest concerns.

If this has been going on for years surely there's no way of tracing everything to ensure it's all deleted?