[Air-L] Ethical practices in scraping data from gay dating apps

[Lik Sam Chan]

Hi all,

I am designing a study to explore racism in a gay dating app (Jack'd). I
plan to collect self-reported data of the user (freely available to anyone
using the app) and types of people the particular user is interested in
(available to premium users). I am planning to write a python script to
collect samples from several major cities in the world -- therefore, I
believe using automated data scraping technique will be more efficient than
manually taking screen-shot of the users' profiles.

I am aware of the recent controversy about scraping users' profile from
Tinder (
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/28/someone-scraped-40000-tinder-selfies-to-make-a-facial-dataset-for-ai-experiments/).
I am also aware that some researchers have used automated scraping
techniques in studying Grindr (
https://www.jedbrubaker.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/Fitzpatrick-DisclosureLBSM.pdf).
I am aware that the app prohibits data scraping so I plan to officially
contact them for their permission.

I am interested in ways in which, after getting permission from the
company, I can collect data in an ethical way, including how to protect the
privacy of the users.


Regards,
Sam

- - - - - -
Lik Sam CHAN, Ph.D.
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, USC
liksamchan.com | @liksamchan