Corpus 2

[TokyoBouncyBall]

A summary would be good and I might do one later but Aston, data scraping, astonishing lack of contrition…

That is very weasely weasel language, any Mustelid would be proud.

Could we reword it as 'Overall it will be likely that poster's true identities will be deliberately revealed during the project'.

If not, what does it mean?

What does 'unlikely' mean?

What does 'accidentally' mean?

What does 'discussed at length' mean?

Very rapacious little carnivores, weasels.

Have skim read so sorry if I've missed it but can't see that Eden's addressed the issue of MN deleting data on the site - due to user request / safety concerns - which she's scraped for use in her research.

So she'd be breaking DPA 2018 and GDPR right there, even if the rest of it was ok. WHICH IT'S NOT.

They are breaking the law, it's quite clear.

I don't know if the photos are as blurry to everyone else as they are to me now I've posted them 🤷‍♀️

They are a bit! (Hugs)

I blame mumsnet

As we are considered alongside other online extremist groups" such as incels and Islamist extremists.
its difficult to have any sympathy for Eden.
However, I still do and am angry at the university for putting her at risk.

Yes. I think a direct complaint to the ICO is probably the only way this is going to get sorted, isn't it?

Christ what a shitshow.

The only reference I've found to deleted posts is The last but one line in this bit:

"The data chosen for analysis must satisfy the following criteria:
• For the ‘time’ analysis, posts and comments will be collected within the boundaries of each of
the three timeframes: (01/01/2008-01/01/2013; 02/01/2013-01/01/2018; 02/01/2018-01/01/2023).
• For the ‘identity’ analysis, posts and comments will discuss one of three transgender identities transgender women, transgender men, and non-binary people). The date the posts were created will be irrelevant.
• Posts and comments consistently must discuss transgender people or transgenderism. The thread will be removed if it significantly diverges from this topic.
• The posts and comments together created at least 30 replies, with any fewer constituting a thread too small to analyse.
• In a selected thread, all comments (and thus participants) will be used in the corpus, unless:

• The comment has been deleted or banned for breaking Mumsnet’s Terms of Service
• The comment was posted after the timeframe for that corpus has ended"

But does she realise that mumsnet can go back to a post or a thread years after and delete? As she'll have to be checking every post right up to the day she publishes!

It's starting to look like it.

The next FOI response is due tomorrow, I think. It'll be interesting to see what that says.

FFS.

I'd alert Aston, only I can't email the bastards as they're liable to put me on some kind of list.

Hopefully someone will tell Eden and get someone at Aston to redact that info.

Right, fuck it, I'll email that lawyer on the thing.

Presumably she'll be able to redact the FOI after it's done? Or should one alert the FOI people?

Why is every fucker so FUCKING INCOMPETENT we have to do everything? Mumsnet - we just ARE everyone's fucking mother.

Thanks mum

hahaha. I have also used a burner Twitter account to contact the supervisor.

Great, well done.

I always thought that if you were seeking to explore a hypothesis, you had to start with the aim of disproving it. That's not what's happening here, is it? And it seems that Eden has gone way beyond a simple hypothesis and believes her approach is based on a fact. i.e. MN is transphobic.

I find it quite astonishing how Eden categorically seems incapable of considering any impact of her research on others. She intends to harvest quotes from LGBT parents board, which is parents sharing intimate, difficult issues on a quiet corner of the website, but doesn't even give a cursory nod to any issues with taking their words and sharing them with whomever Eden fancies sharing them with. She doesn't imagine that parents looking for help and support with parenting may find her work intrusive, insensitive, unethical, hurtful, abusive - which is before we even get into the complex legalities of the situation?

But she can whang on for several paragraphs about how being exposed to different viewpoints may necessitate fucking therapy.

My sympathy is scant, tbh. Eden needs to learn some empathy, imagination, and compassion.

What decent women you are.

Frankly I can't be arsed mopping up after Aston after the unethical disregard they've shown to vulnerable parents. The people releasing this info, sitting on the "ethics board" are paid, you're not. Definitely use burner accounts and don't put yourself at risk. Aston will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat as they've shown.

The alternative is to email (using a burner account) a journalist in one of the spaces talking about GDPR / DPA enforcement / compliance / the law and get them to speak to Aston.

As you say Arabella the parents on the LGBT board almost certainly did NOT expect their attempts to find a community and get help to end up in some libellous PhD thesis for eternity.

I think everyone is pissed off with Aston, but nobody wants anyone having personal info exposed like that.

And yes, I've used a burner email. It seems Aston can't be trusted with anyone's info, whether out of malice or incompetence. Or both.

Yep!

Eden is so far from impartial in any way on this. She truly believes we are a bunch of bigoted transphobes. When in the main we are parents concerned about children and women concerned about women's rights and men circumventing societal norms by using the trans movement to do all the things they couldn't as men. When it comes to being in women's single sex spaces etc etc etc.

Because actually, we're bothered about other human beings. Even when they can't be bothered about us.

Tis true! I am able to be thoroughly annoyed at Eden and her apparent couldn't give a toss who is upset by what I'm doing attitude whilst being very concerned that the University screwed her over in that response by not redacting her personal information properly!

I've been following with interest, when I have time. Your posts have been articulate, intelligent and funny, and I'm really grateful to you all. I'm seriously considering if I can record my time in reading this thread on my CPD as I'm definitely learning a lot!
I work in the corporate world in a related area and I feel like I'm constantly a lone voice on the ethics of scraping, though I deal with numerical data unrelated to people so the gdpr stuff doesn't apply. I've been wondering if I'm just too old and therefore wrong on this because I'm not keeping up with the times. That's what the faces of my younger colleagues are telling me every time I say anything. So whilst I'm still appalled by the scraping I'm also reassured that I'm not alone now.
Aston described the second scrape as much smaller, and yet it's still too big and therefore impossible to seek permission according to Eden - they can't both be correct surely? And it doesn't explain why Eden didn't seek permission from Mumsnet HQ.

'Scraping' seems to be a very new thing, so I imagine the ethics of it are evolving as we speak.

What's interesting/worrying is that one makes a post on here while tech is at a certain stage, and as time wears on, tech gets more powerful and sophisticated, leaving issues like the ability to identify posters when that really probably wasn't possible at the time the post was made. So how is 'informed consent' ever possible, when the 'informed' bit or the context changes all the time?

Apologies @ArabellaScott for using you to prove what we all know, but I have just cut and pasted a line from your 3.17 post (Eden’s own words on why her PhD is not likely to identify anyone) to a search on mumsnet and guess what happened?

There is no way that the PhD can have any quote that isn’t instantly traceable to a username which can then be used to build up a picture by searching all that usernames posts.

I also can’t quite believe it’s also the children on the LGBT board she’s gone for?! And the relationship board which often involves domestic violence. Wow.

Eden and Nicci will bring up some interesting search results for baby names on mumsnet in future!

And it is due December 2026 (the PhD not a baby). So gives me a bit of thinking time before I make up my mind on my data. It would be useful if Aston could issue a date for last withdrawl before it is conceived.