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.

You can also withdraw consent for the use of your data and ask your data to be deleted. Given Aston didn't have permission in the first place, it's a bit strange to do this, but enough people have said they're not ok with it now that Aston should really be making efforts to remove all data from people who have requested deletion from their database under the data protection legislation. Which I think in practice means deletion of the whole data set. And they can't claim they need to know our real identities as they can at least remove all of Dumbledoreslemonsherberts (and I'm happy to give up other usernames) posts from their database.

I don't really want to have direct dealings with people who hold MN users in such contempt and display such arrogance, though. This is when I wish I was JKR (I mean, I sort of wish this anyway, she's awesome) and had the wealth to employ a lawyer to do this on my behalf.

@Dumbledoreslemonsherbets

I wonder if Legal Feminist might help draft a letter? They did retweet this thread after all. Then they could just provide our usernames.

I needed advice about a data breech last year and the ICO web page had a chat function which seemed to be a real person rather than an AI. They were very helpful about my issue.

@JustineMumsnet
@LilyMumsnet

Can you answer Dumbledore's question please?

Tx

I'm not on twitter (or I would never get anything done...), but could someone who is tweet them asking advice?

Well, we are not getting much information from Aston or Mumsnet.

ICO would seem to be the next stop.

With respect, surely we should be leaving this for @JustineMumsnet?

Thing is it’s our data and there’s been no update from Mumsnet.

Yes, but we have no idea what's going on behind the scenes

It would be reassuring to hear that there are things going on behind the scenes - which might be complex for whatever reasons.

How long duz it take to realise you got caught doing a bad thing? Cuz I hate when people think they can get away with shit by goin quiet fer a few days n a big ass uni hidin like a toddler is NOT a good look.

Thieves and cowards run arsetown uni.

I find the silence very encouraging because it suggests that lawyers are involved and the issue is being taken seriously.

And I just think they are discussing money. How much per post, per user. Let's be fair, if this was going like the New York times? Was it, at $10 a paragraph , something like that. Mumsnet is an actual gold mine. Worth billions. Ok the Aston university wont have that much to spend, but other people do.

I know MNHQ are going to be very busy behind the scenes but I would also appreciate an update. A pinned post at the top of the threads from MN explaining the situation would be helpful, even if it was locked and didn't allow regular users to comment.

I know there might not be any updates for those on this thread, but i'm concerned that a lot of posters have no idea about this issue, and I feel they deserve to know.

We interrupt this thread to bring you this news;
Prof Alice Sullivan has been asked by the Government to head a review of various things following the Cass report. She and her team are asking for examples of research being undermined by poor data segregation (e.g. sex recorded incorrectly leading to inaccurate conclusions) and of organisations giving incorrect or incomplete advice on e.g. who may use single sex spaces. Deadline end June: link here: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/55np2k

That's my take, too.

I think this is an initiative by Kemi Badenoch - it’s separate to Alice Sullivan’s review.

The survey linked above asks for examples of policies around single sex spaces that do not align with the law. Alice Sullivan’s review asks for (1) examples of where sex and gender are being confused in data collection, or where data gender is being collected instead of sex, and (2) examples of barriers to research.

People can obviously submit to either or both of these surveys - but they are separate initiatives asking different questions 😊

What is interesting to me is that there are lots of different public forums used for research in e.g. the social sciences, linguistics etc. Instagram post are one example I've seen with the justification that it's OK with no need to seek permission if it's already in the public domain and not password protected etc. It will be very interesting to see how this develops and the legal outcome with Reddit etc.

@SqueakyDinosaur Do you want to start a new thread on that in FWR? I think a LOT of people would like to give their opinions.

I just found this guidance which seems to suggest that at least in the social sciences it's legally permissible to use posts without permission

user-research.education.gov.uk/guidance/ethics-and-safeguarding/using-social-media-in-user-research

But I think it's the data mining aspect that's more legally contentious. I'm not sure whether the Mumsnet T&Cs would hold up in court as legally, it is the forum poster who holds the copyright not the website. However I'm no lawyer, just an interested researcher who is curious to see how this plays out.

@BurbageBrook yes, forums and their posts are public domain. In a way, I mind that less - This corpus, though, is not the forum. It is a data scrape of a forum that:

• has been counter to the forum's terms and conditions since it was created, and through various developments of the law
• is extremely unlikely to be a mirror of the original forum with the posts and threads deleted, both on request or by the forum's lead operational team
• is kept on a secure server with the caveat of needing special access permission to be able to do research on it (how public domain is that??)
• Is attracting funding for criminal research, and paying students
• is being mined on the grounds of research, though with many bits of evidence that posts with diverse and clearly sensitive content have been used in various different media (online films, presentations, writing) with no indication that any effort has been made to clear ethical considerations or legitimate interest changes. Such work - also much of it in the public domain until very recently - is being removed very quickly by those responsible, left right and centre.
• has allowed a research topic to go ahead that seeks to use language across the corpus to remove, and erode, poster anonymity, despite this having very problematic aspects, for posters, quoters, and others who may walk a line of being (pseudo-) identifiable by association through posters' content.

Someone recently - not I think on this thread or wrt Asston, described Mumsnet as an unmoderated forum. As we all know, Mumsnet is quite strictly moderated albeit reactively, so a lot of nonsense appears briefly then gets zapped. Scrapers, depending on when they scrape, could be collecting a lot of destructive but ephemeral stuff that most users have never seen, which makes branding us all as hate criminals very dodgy.

There is also the question of university students and maybe researchers, who knows, deliberately posting hateful stuff that they then quote to justify their own arguments, with sometimes quite comic results, because they don't know just how fast it vanished.

I'm leaving that typo where it is.

The DfE guidance relates to ethnographic research, though, which is different than forensic linguistic analysis, and the webpage is quite clear about how material from social media can be used and to what purpose.
There are many papers already which use MN as a source in the social sciences. Some of these are discussed upthread, alongside the ethics of using them and issues of consent. Data scraping without permission is not a recognised method in the social sciences, as far as I am aware.

@BurbageBrook

But I think it's the data mining aspect that's more legally contentious. I'm not sure whether the Mumsnet T&Cs would hold up in court as legally, it is the forum poster who holds the copyright not the website. However I'm no lawyer, just an interested researcher who is curious to see how this plays out.

But the very first paragraph of MN's terms says this:

Copyright
This web site and its contents are copyright Mumsnet, all rights reserved. Reproduction of all or any substantial part of the contents in any form is prohibited.

No part of the site may be distributed, scraped or copied for any purpose without express approval. If you are interested in copying, licensing or using Mumsnet content in any way, then contact us at [email protected].

... although it then goes on to say that users also have copyright:

Subject to the rights and license you grant to us under these Terms of Use, you retain all your right, title and interest in your User Content submissions. This means that copyright in your User Content will remain with you and that you can continue to use the material in any way, including allowing others to use it.

IANAL but this suggests that we share copyright, as users, with MN, surely?

Isn't it kind of like the situation with letters, as per the Duchess of Sussex's letter to her dad, which the Daily Mail printed? The actual object is owned by the receiver, but the content still belongs to the writer/sender.

In either case, I think Aston's argument is weak, because they sought permission neither from MN nor from individual users.