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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

As a counterpoint here I don't consider this study or the Linux kernel study human subject research unless we define human subject research so broadly that the definition essentially becomes meaningless.

As a side note I find the "outrage" about these small academic studies quite hipocritical. This is a community where a significant proportion of people work in related to ads/clicks who constantly experiment on human subjects (at least by the definition applied to the cases above). Let's not even talk about the research done by Facebook et al (where a significant proportion of developers here work as well), who literally looked at how changing the time line affects the mental health of users.

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If a study is observing how human reacts to a certain situation, that's research with human subjects. The Linux study observed how maintainers react to bugs, this CCPA/GDPR request spam observed how data protection staff reacts to requests about their processes.

And the backlash is not hypocritical. You're of course right that FB has also done really questionable research, but that doesn't matter here. I've also seen significant uncertainty about this spam series in the data protection/privacy community, i.e. criticism by those people who get to deal with these emails.

By that definition if I change the layout of my website and observe if it changes how humans change their behaviour, i.e. how and where they click it's human research. With that definition pretty much everything is human research. Well even if I track where rubbish is being transported to it is observing human behaviour and thus human research.

It remains also hypocritical. If you (not you personally but in general) are outraged by this research as unethical and you are working for companies who do any optimisation of their ads/engagement etc., you are contributing to the same (and arguably much worse) behaviour that you condem as unethical. I call complaining in others about something that you do yourself on an often much larger scale hypocrisy.

When you study how humans react to changes to a website, you study the behavior of the visitors to the website.

When you study where rubbish is being transported to, you study a system designed by humans.

There's an obvious difference.

Also, I think most of optimisation of ads/engagement is plain unethical. So there's no hypocrisy on my part.

If you’ll recall, Facebook did take a lot of flack for changing newsfeed content for users to see what behavioral changes it would induce.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...

> I call complaining in others about something that you do yourself on an often much larger scale hypocrisy.

The assumption that everyone complaining about this works in adtech or even does A/B testing is ridiculous. HN has a very strong contingent of people who are antagonistic to that entire field so making such a generalization is absolutely false.

I would point out that A/B testing minor changes without consent is a little creepy, deceiving your users in the process (by say changing pricing measure on them) makes it far more creepy. If you add bogus legal intimidation (or other language designed to elicit a strong emotional response) to that, it becomes creepy on a whole different scale.

The nub there is not the definition of "involving human subjects", but the definition of "research".

By the relevant federal regulations (https://irb.ufl.edu/index/humanrsch.html)

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(l) Research means a systematic investigation, including research development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. Activities that meet this definition constitute research for purposes of this policy, whether or not they are conducted or supported under a program that is considered research for other purposes. For example, some demonstration and service programs may include research activities.

================================================================

This is a good overview: https://irb.ufl.edu/index/humanrsch.html

Wait. Did you really mean to tag anyone simply _employed_ by Facebook as hypocritical? As if being employed by an entity immediately connotes acquiescence to whatever unethical or immoral behavior that entity engages in? Isn't that "guilt by association" taken a bit far? It's as if you were to call Google pro Sanders because a significant amount of money was donated to the Senator's campaign by non-executive Google employees (as if there were many other avenues to protest the status quo and still put food on the table). Full disclosure: not a big tech employee or a dev, just another over-the-hill greybeard sysadmin with absolutely no influence on corporate behavior.

That is a ridiculous comparison and absolutely not what guilt by association is.

If you work for a political campaign before the candidate announces their support for killing puppies, holding you responsible for that position is "guilt by association", but if you go to work for that same candidate after the announcement, it is no longer guilt by association, you have made a deliberate choice to support someone who wants to kill puppies and now share some responsibility.

Much of Facebook's anti-privacy behavior is widely documented. Going to work for Facebook absolutely makes you a little responsible for that behavior.

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