Thread 3: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

[VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia]

In which we continue to discuss the Aston scrapists.

• The Site Stuff thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/sitestuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus
• FWR thread #1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5057460-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet
• FWR thread #2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5060410-thread-2-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet

That's a fair point. But it would also illustrate the trust that someone would have had in the systems or privacy policies of one organisation - the workplace - that they thought they were consenting to, at the point where they would have applied for employment or a place, I think. When they volunteered information they considered sensitive and storeable, or destructible after some years. It's dependent on that organisation to honour the contract wording, do things that have a sensible chance of protecting those interests, raise information about any breaches, or activities that somehow trump that agreement later on, such as carefully-followed FOI practices. 'Concerns about ethics decisions' isn't quite there at present, but it's not completely outrageous as a suggestion.

I worked somewhere that held certain animals for testing, on campus, but in places not readily accessible and rather under the radar. There are reputational issues in many universities from accepting or using donations from some sources that have questionable pasts in light of the recent decades - students and staff alike are beginning to stand up for their opinions on them. I can see these things, for example, not being too far from a term of 'Concerns about ethics decisions'.

If Aston can't be trusted with the data of their own PhD students, how can we trust them with any other data?

Their PHD students at least weighed up the institutional trust they had in giving such data to their university (with a somewhat non-negotiable overtone to it, if they wanted to be a part of that community).
Not so, those whose intent was to sign up to the terms of an internet forum between 10 and 20 years ago, that was seemingly unconnected to universities or linguistics research, or retention for unspecified periods in the form of a scraped corpus of material existing outside of that format.

I'm curious why Aston don't seem to care about their reputation.

Am I right in thinking there are two main reputational issues?

The first is endorsing a PhD student's decision to pursue research based on a lunatic, anti-scientific ideology akin to astrology or a belief in crystals. I guess the answer to that is that they don't realise or care how bad this looks because they inhabit a bubble where everyone adheres (or appears to adhere) to this ideology. See also universities' treatment of Kathleen Stock, Jo Phoenix etc. You'd be mad to lose good high-ranking academics like that who are defending a rational, pro-science view, but there you go - that was the decision they made.

The other is the ethically questionable decision to use, without permission, data from a widely-used website. I'm guessing that for Aston, this is something they are very very keen to do and keep on doing, in much the same way that Google is creating electronic versions of books that are technically still in copyright. The benefits to universities of being able to access and analyse this kind of data must be huge, and as a PP said, they won't be the only university doing it.

Perhaps there is a third reputational issue, ie labelling as bigots and transphobes a group of people with perfectly ordinary mainstream political beliefs. But I think that probably falls under point one.

It's a good point.

Even if they're selling their reputation as a place with a loose application of ethics that allows them to conduct morally dubious but potentially politically useful activities, the sheer stupidity and incompetence of this debacle would surely put potential customers off?

Point one could be described as being able and willing to bend laws and ethics to pursue arbitrary targets as instructed.

This pirating is so dodgy. How can it possibly comply with eg consent to opt in the data to be used for these purposes? the right to be forgotten? Consent to opt out to these uses of the data? Or the right to request deleting all of your own data from MN?

Assuming this does break laws, and posters are saying this is not unusual practice in the industry, there must be a big problem with clear laws and confident government regulation. And a big problem with training and awareness of data law at university ethics committees and in commercial companies. They’re either nodding things through naively unawares, or being really cynical and ‘begging forgiveness instead of asking permission’ . It sounds like there isn’t a scary enough government legal deterrent. Is the ICO not up to dealing with this?

Even when Facebook itself does training using people’s Facebook content, it offers a (complex sounding) opt out. So there is a prominent industry acknowledgement that the consent to use the content, still rests with the person who posted it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw99n3qjeyjo

As a final point given many of us have spent more hours than we’d probably like to admit to over the years on here- there should also IMO be an opt in, where posters can lease out their MN data for specific legal purposes for a fee if a company wants to use it. MN can be paid as well, by levying a fee to these companies to facilitate them to seek these permissions from posters.

MN may yet adopt the Reddit route to monetising user content through an arrangement with AI companies.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/19/reddit-user-content-being-sold/

This pirating is so dodgy. How can it possibly comply with eg consent to opt in the data to be used for these purposes? the right to be forgotten? Consent to opt out to these uses of the data? Or the right to request deleting all of your own data from MN?

It has to reel in the question/s of what constitutes the data processor and the data controller in this situation - for me, it's far from easy to call.
If the material used was the live site, with its removals, name changes, reports of threads or posts, concerns about things being identifying or downright naive or stupid to post, tangents, and how that looks when moderated from one day to the next, then the GDPR stuff seems clearer, but it rests on Aston having scraped and sandboxed (without consent and apparently against the evolving MN terms and conditions with their posters) more than one corpus of material. This under the justification of providing these as a source of research with a historical offer of however far back those posts go, for anyone intent on publishing and/or presenting, whose research ethics have been found acceptable.

‘begging forgiveness instead of asking permission’

this phrase always makes me feel physically sick bc what it’s saying is:

I KNOW don’t have your consent,
I KNOW you would not give me your consent if I asked,
so I am going to do what I want to you anyway
then do a 🤷‍♂️ meh sorry afterwards

following this I am going to say “see it was ok not to ask bc I said sorry <blinky eyelashes>

therefore I am going to do what I want to you OVER AND OVER AGAIN”

All ‘begging forgiveness instead of asking permission’ tells you is that the person (or institution) saying it is abusive

they don’t give a fuck about consent pre-during-post whatever abusive behaviour they want to do to you

but they do prefer to sound like a pretentious prick while doing it rather than the abuser they actually are

DaisyChains (on your earlier post): "I hoped for flying skateboards and holodecks not this dystopian dumpster fire…"

This popped into my head recently too, but the thought was that we never predicted it would be the potholes, in the end, that gave the final umph to the need for affordable flying car technology.

it would be the potholes, in the end, that gave the final umph to the need for affordable flying car technology

still time for potheads to create a need for flying mean machine vans, and if they can scooby-doobie-do some unmasking of villains at the old haunted house on the hill all the more appealing 👌💨