[collectedparts]

If I had to guess, the wording is in the study's FAQ is carefully chosen: "an application detailing our research methods" doesn't necessarily mean "an application with the verbatim text of the emails we planned to send, including our thinly veiled legal threat at the end."

Not trying to turn this thread into a generic flameware against "academic" research methods, but this whole things seems oddly reminiscent of the "let's try to insert malicious code into Linux" fiasco [1]. I'm conceptually fine with generic passive tools like web crawlers to conduct research, but since when did the internet become a place where nonconsensual interactive research became fine?

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/linux-bans-un...

[webmaven]

> Not trying to turn this thread into a generic flameware against "academic" research methods, but this whole things seems oddly reminiscent of the "let's try to insert malicious code into Linux" fiasco [1]. I'm conceptually fine with generic passive tools like web crawlers to conduct research, but since when did the internet become a place where nonconsensual interactive research became fine?

In a very real sense, every landing page A/B test is nonconsensual interactive research.

Or at least, if there is line between them, however blurry, I can't find it.

I am skeptical of the idea that such a line should be drawn according to who is doing the experimentation, I don't think that a manipulative act becomes okay just because it is being done by an academic for research purposes, nor do I think that it becomes okay just because it is being done by a layman with a profit motive (or a political one, for that matter).

[rtpg]

> In a very real sense, every landing page A/B test is nonconsensual interactive research.

I think that lots of benign testing is only this a bit pedantically, at least for the general "two variants of a page" type of thing, context matters of course.

"I want to use this service" -> "OK, here is the page for that service" is a certain interaction where, granted, you might be presented with a different kind of look, but... well, you are getting what you asked for I suppose. Though you could get into the ethics of price differentiation by geo-data, and other general things that lead you to feeling ripped off.

OK, maybe lots of "growth-hacking" A/B test stuff does fall into this category...

I think the primary component of both this CCPA thing and the Linux kernel is, esentially, dishonesty. Researchers are doing things to outright lie to others. Here they are using fake identities! And it probably fails the general smell test of "if the counterparty was informed of the details, would they feel bad about the whole interaction". I said it elsewhere, I don't know if it's really fraud legally but it sure feels like it.

[emn13]

To play devils advocate - is that really all that different from much other online communication? A significant chunk of the web runs on advertisements; and those are in essence tons of little influence games, often with little regard for the truth or honesty: the aim is to manipulate by whatever means you can get away with.

A lot of forums have issues with spam and sock puppets, and not all of that is obvious nor all of it honest.

Even many large, curated news sites have now succumbed to the benefits of deceiving their audience; whether through outright misrepresentation, or merely selective ommission, or merely editorial emphasis that prioritizes their agenda over their readers' understanding of the material.

Attempts to course correct here run into vast vested interests (when it comes to e.g. advertising or biases media), and also against the implementation of free speech protections in the US (and many other places), and more subtly, against public opinion on free speech, which refuses to countenance any attempts at reform.

In essence, we prioritize the right to deceive over the right not to be deceived - in all but the most extreme of circumstances.

Chalk one up for team deception - while this surely isn't a good trend, I can't see how this research is even close to some of the more problematic stuff floating around.

[phone[phone]]

> In a very real sense, every landing page A/B test is nonconsensual interactive research.

I think the difference here is that the user requests a page with a web browser (which could be argued as giving consent to view the contents) while the person that received this email didn't request the experimental email (and therefore didn't consent to the experiment).

[XCSme]

If you consider A/B test nonconsensual research, then you can also consider localized versions of the sites as A/B tests. Or even serving differnet content for mobile and desktop.

[seoaeu]

The problem, like in that previous case, is that "human subject research" is a pretty narrowly defined category. It is mostly meant to cover testing out drugs on human subjects, and stuff like that. Notably, there is plenty of unethical research that doesn't qualify. So when an IRB gets a proposal that amounts to "I'm going to send some emails/interact with some folks online" their reply is likely to be along them lines "not our problem", and it becomes the responsibility of the research to assess the ethics of what they're doing.

[ineedasername]

The IRB boards I've interacted with or seen peers go through included more than just drugs etc. A survey or interviewing people has always been included as human subject research by the boards. Depending on the specifics, surveys & interviews may be exempt from a full review of the human subjects process, but only after the IRB itself has made that designation. Basically a PI shouldn't be talking to a human as as part of their research without the IRB making a determination on it.

Anything related to food & drug testing is usually its own special category of review within the IRB, but it's not just meant-- and has never been meant-- to only deal with biomed research. The Belmont Report in 1979 that gave rise to the modern IRB explicitly addressed research with human subjects, not just biomedical research. Anyone in that field is aware of the extreme examples like Milgram's work and the Stanford Prison experiment that make this review necessary.

It may be the case that some IRB's don't take that side of thing as seriously as they should, but that doesn't mean the ethical burden is primarily on the researchers. The legal liability is on the institution, and the IRB is the regulation-mandated body required to ensure compliance.

[ravel-bar-foo]

But when the Sokal squared hoaxers were submitting fake papers to humanities journals, it was deemed human subject research and widely denounced (by humanities researchers) for lack of ethical review. This seems to be a very analogous situation.

[BrazzVuvuzela]

The wording of the message is one hell of a detail to leave out when detailing your research methods.

[avs733]

It’s seems like it but it’s not.

The IRB review determination is going to be based on the typology of what you are doing not the internal contents for the most part. Once they decide the level of appropriate review then they will typically look at the ‘details’.