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.

Isn't it also possible that one username could be used by more than one person? Two or more people could use the same account & username if they each know the password or have access to a shared bit of tech where the account is permanently active. (I've suspected for a while that one particular account on here may be being used in this way.)

I'd assume that it's much rarer than one account changing usernames, but the possibility exists.

Thanks Vito, it could have been this. It hasn’t come up again so hasn’t caused an issue (like it has for some people on the other thread), but it was interesting to fill in in light of the conversations we’ve been having on this thread.

I was much more careful not to give consent for non-essential things and really red it thoroughly.

“Read “ it thoroughly.

Yes I think I have seen that happen openly where a husband has used his wife’s account to ask for advice while she was in hospital and unable to post.

DH has occasionally posted something on here for me.

Thanks Vito, I'll pop over there and have a read

Sorry to be thick but have I got this right?

Some students think they can identify users on here using specialist technology? As discussed, most people have several usernames so surely that throws a spanner in the works….

Also how would they know if they correct? Who would confirm this? They can’t assume surely…

No, the academics (not students) were not explicitly setting out to identity users on MN in the real world, but train a model that could identify posts by the same anonymous user. This obviously has real world implications. To do this, they had scraped the forum to have a ‘sandbox to play in’ - ie see what their model could do. This is the content of the 2019 presentations linked earlier in the thread.

The student separately was planning to use the data scrape (corpus) to follow trends in what they describe as ‘transphobia’ since 2008.

We simply do not know enough about the PhD to know whether it was going to try and link people to individuals in real life. What the PhD does show, however, is that the dataset can be used for purposes which were not originally intended.

Researchers absolutely love social media forums. All that data freely available to download and analyse. No arduous data collection. No - seemingly - ethical concerns because it’s anonymous and we’ve posted of our own free will. No having to actually talk to people.

I’ve listened to so many presentations explaining quantification of this and that. Lots of ‘what’s happening’ but precious little explanation of ‘why’ as that would require talking to individuals.

Eden's PhD could be interesting, and useful, if she ditched the bias and looked for increased mention of transgender (or literally anything) and linked it back to what was happening at the time in the world. Although that's probably not novel. Perhaps seeing what persisted despite interest in 'the real world' apparently dying away. What leads, is it mentions on SM or traditional news sources that sets the agenda.

Oh, and get permission to use the data in the first fucking place.

I'm becoming increasingly concerned for Eden's well being. I'm so glad that all the focus is, quite rightly, on the university but I'm worried they are going to blame her for bringing their staggeringly poor and unethical choices into the spotlight, particularly if it leads to financial consequences for the uni going forward.

Is she on any social media or anything? Do we know if she's ok?

Surely the whole goal of the department is to create a ‘crime’ database for the police/funders/whoever they say can have the database. And unless the supervisor was double-bluffing with their specific Women’s Votes to Trans Rights banner change on X, and the researcher bluffing with their ‘hate crimes’ language on their LinkedIn, it seems obvious they wanted a positive database.

Maybe they just wanted to big it up but they didn’t follow how it would be perceived socially, academically, professionally and legally. Ironically it’s now their real life names that are linked to a contentious situation. Which surely must also be something that was not originally intended too!

I know it’s been said many times on this thread but this is really preying on me now.

I woke in the night and was pondering how many heartbreaking threads I've read on here over my 20+ years on MN, women sharing their deepest fears and worst experiences, including illness and death. I was thinking of one in particular that unfolded and ended in the most tragic way possible, and how many of us were accompanying the OP as she posted so eloquently and bravely.

And now we find that all those experiences have been swept casually into a 'sandbox' along with a cache of criminal records, just so much fodder to be ingested and processed and 'played with'.

This is not OK.

I was thinking of one in particular that unfolded and ended in the most tragic way possible

I recall one series of threads where the OP was terminally ill and the last few posters were from her newly-widowed DH. We might be thinking of the same thread series.

All scraped without consent by uncaring men.

I hope she's ok too and that she's got solid support from family and friends as well.

There was a petition last year about creating a statutory legal duty of care for students in Higher Education and the government replied: 'Higher Education providers do have a general duty of care to deliver educational and pastoral services to the standard of an ordinarily competent institution and, in carrying out these services, they are expected to act reasonably to protect the health, safety and welfare of their students. This can be summed up as providers owing a duty of care to not cause harm to their students through the university’s own actions.'
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/622847

I don't know if campaigners took this further. What is 'an ordinarily competent institution'? The examples around us re gender ideology, and the fact this project was even approved to start, make me question this, but I hope Aston are taking Eden's situation and their duty of care seriously. She'll have already used a couple of terms of funding and I hope this doesn't impact on her financially on top of it all whether or not she'll walk away from HE put off by this experience, or else start a PhD again in some other form following a lot of revision and with appropriate supervision.

I can't reconcile ethics policies and committees with what's gone on here. I wonder what the minutes say. FoI request?

...and the justification for placing the research to let a forensic linguistics department holding the strings, and funders being interested in findings, was that the posts had enough information to deem them to be classified or linked with crimes and 'evidence' of criminal behaviour. There are sporadic instances of this in the forum, most probably, until they are deleted after objections.

But there are hundreds of times more examples of vulnerability and sensitive information because of all the other threads that aren't connected to what they are hanging this on. And researching over ALL of the possible threads means that 10 percent is the trans related language and 90 percent is the infertility, VAWG, eating disorders, body image work, bereavement, caring for elderly or other vulnerable people, debt... do I need to go on? And that these threads will have been subject to concern and/or deletion too.

The purpose in the ts and cs is "to make parents' lives easier". Both within those, and as interpreted by other thread starters, sometimes explicitly, there is the appearance of a very strong motivation towards anonymity, ethical and fair moderation, and trust that this will be consistent. There is the impression that changes in what is needed for suitable protection and users' awareness have been kept up to date as technology and laws evolve, as the format and business needs strong cyber security and operational expertise.

That trust, with this relationship to the situation, is under huge challenge.

Yes, @VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia. That very one.

There are already FOIs for this on WhatDoTheyKnow.

Thanks. I'd forgotten about that - on both posts. Good.

There was also a time when usernames were err copied sort of, but letters swapped, like I for l so unless you were very exacting about usernames or knew the board and posters well, you'd be blind to this. It was a passing fad, but it deffo happened.

To be fair, their real life names were always going to be public. The student, because that's how it works. We should be able to look up all thesese (spl)
And read them, the supervisor cos she works there. I'm not in a scholarly setting but my name and picture are on my workplace website. So I can be identified. Partner is a gas engineer, if you look him up on the register you'll see his picture and address.

Humans may struggle to differentiate lower L from upper I, but computers don't.

What conclusions an observer might reach, I don't know.

That would be actually really interesting.

I wonder too whether the PHD student in question would have been at all interested in what women had to say if it didn’t involve a potential bias towards proving them pesky transphobics.

Oh well, it’s inspired some more fun namechanges.