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

[Deen Freelon]

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/features/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