[Air-L] Research ethics and platform Terms of Use

Thu Aug 9 09:36:22 PDT 2018

emails = Tweets

typing with two broken shoulders apparently cognitive issues :-)

On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 12:34 PM, Shulman, Stu <stu at texifter.com> wrote:

> I was super curious about the dump of those emails. When we did the same
> thing in 2011 with Bin Laden emails in the wake of his killing. We posted
> 2,000,0000 in English and 2,000,000 in Arabic in a downloadable format. The
> next day we heard from legal at Twitter. We have made every effort to be
> compliant since. This means if you want to study the Bin Laden corpus, I
> can share it with you on our platform, if you are a registered user, but I
> cannot create a duplicate copy of all the data and send you a link to
> download it. (Yes: let me know if you want access.)
>
> This is a small but important part of a larger, meta discussion about
> whether we should preserve distributed innovation by having everyone create
> their own collections, play by their own rules, build their own tools, obey
> the ToS when they see the wisdom, resist when the cause is
> just...or...should we start settling on a set of shared practices/systems,
> perhaps one stream for the open source DIY crowd and another stream for
> those willing to accept that R & Python cannot work for every student,
> teacher, or researcher, and that there are options (open source &
> commercial) rooted in NSF-funded academic research to standardize the way
> academic Twitter data is stored, searched, shared, displayed (non-trivial),
> redacted (when necessary) and reported on.
>
> Compliance means we as a small business can continue to help academics
> work within the rules set by Twitter. As many of you know, the technical
> requirements of compliance are trickier than the good intention to be
> compliant. We struggle with a few of the technologically daunting aspects
> of storing and updating sets that comprise only about 1 billion curated
> Tweets.
>
> In answer to your question, I felt excitement and dread when I saw the
> news. It immediately reminded me of the Bin Laden experience. I am one of
> those crazy political science PhDs open to the idea American democracy may
> never be safe for voters after 2016. It was never perfect, but it moved
> toward a more perfect union. Now we are on a different path and I can see a
> public interest case for ignoring the ToS. There is that slippery slope
> issue...for now I worry less that we cannot do the research because we are
> constrained and more that the thing we are studying will never be the same.
>
> Puzzling times and there is definitely no one right way through. Best to
> keep talking (and meeting?) about this.
>
> Stu
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 11:45 AM, Deen Freelon <dfreelon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Jean,
>>
>> I'm glad you brought this issue up. In a forthcoming journal article,
>> book chapter, and a series of recent talks, I have articulated the argument
>> that ToS are not, and should not be considered, ironclad rules binding the
>> activities of academic researchers. Think about it: does it really make
>> sense to have social media companies dictating what we can and can't study?
>> Remember, ToS can include almost anything, so a platform could try to
>> forbid all research even remotely involving content posted to it. I don't
>> think researchers should reasonably be expected to adhere to such
>> conditions, especially at a time when officially sanctioned options for
>> collecting social media data are disappearing left and right.
>>
>> Another related issue deals with the difference between human subjects
>> protections and the purpose of ToS. Like human resources, ToS exist to
>> protect the parent company, not users. Any user protections are completely
>> optional and subject to change without notice. Thus, just as compliance
>> with ToS does not guarantee user protection, ToS violations do not
>> necessarily imply user harm. These issues are entirely distinct and should
>> be handled accordingly by researchers and IRBs.
>>
>> Finally, I have advocated for what I call a "public interest rationale"
>> in violating ToS for certain research purposes. For example, consider the
>> recent dump by FiveThirtyEight of nearly 3M tweets posted by the Internet
>> Research Agency: https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe
>> atures/why-were-sharing-3-million-russian-troll-tweets/ This dataset
>> violates Twitter's terms of service in two ways: first, by posting full
>> Twitter metadata rather than only Twitter IDs; and second, by encouraging
>> the study of deleted content, which third parties are supposed to dispose
>> of. But given the importance of understanding foreign attempts to undermine
>> democracy--acknowledged at the highest levels of the US government--I
>> believe these infractions are more than justified. As the 538 authors
>> write, "Reassembling this corpus of tweets is an exercise in a certain kind
>> of national security." The public deserves to know when and how their
>> democratic process is being messed with, and I don't think it's a good idea
>> to let corporate red tape prevent them from acquiring that knowledge.
>>
>> Curious to know what others think about this issue. Best, /DEEN
>>
>> On 8/8/2018 7:27 PM, Jean Burgess wrote:
>>
>>> And of course, the subject line should not be APIs, but Terms of
>>> Service/Use!
>>>
>>> On 9/8/18, 9:24 am, "Air-L on behalf of Jean Burgess" <
>>> air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org on behalf of je.burgess at qut.edu.au>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>      Dear colleagues, I’m keen to hear of your experiences with your own
>>> research ethics boards/committees, especially in the PCA (Post-Cambridge
>>> Analytica) era:
>>>                  1.  Have any of you noticed a recent increase in
>>> IRBs/ethics committees requiring proof of compliance with social media
>>> platforms or apps’ Terms of Service/Terms of Use as part of ethical
>>> clearance requirements? Please note I’m not only interested in so-called
>>> data-driven methods or API access here, but all kinds of ethnographic,
>>> qualitative social research, and critical-interpretative approaches as well.
>>>        2.  If so, are questions of ToS compliance restricted to
>>> reasonable questions of harm to participants (for example, your methods may
>>> inadvertently induce a participant to share the content of another user,
>>> hence violating their own contract with the platform provider)
>>>        3.  Where questions of ToS appear to exceed the bounds of human
>>> research ethics considerations (perhaps appearing more concerned with
>>> institutional risk avoidance), how have you responded?
>>>           Not actually asking for a friend
>>>           Jean
>>>      _______________________________________________
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>>
>> --
>> Deen Freelon, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor
>> School of Media and Journalism, UNC-Chapel Hill
>> http://dfreelon.org | @dfreelon <https://twitter.com/dfreelon> |
>> https://github.com/dfreelon
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
> Founder and CEO, Texifter
> Cell: 413-992-8513
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartwshulman
>
>

-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Founder and CEO, Texifter
Cell: 413-992-8513
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartwshulman