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.
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.