I know this was hashed out on the other threads a bit, but can someone please explain to me why folks are so up in arms about this, compared to, say, studies that scrape user data without consent (something the IRB allows all the time by saying that no human subjects are involved)? Is it simply because there is no visibility into this practice (i.e., no email sent?) Scraping user data from public profiles, aggregating it into a model, and publishing a paper or whatever -- that seems demonstrably more invasive to individuals, storing and keeping their user data, than an email quoting a statute.
I agree that the deception was unnecessary, but that's it. It doesn't feel any wronger than that.
Especially because these researchers really were acting in "meta" good faith trying to probe the privacy ecosystem, I fear there may be a chilling effect. Consumers deserve privacy rights and privacy knowledge in the asymmetric surveillance economy we find ourselves in, IMO.
I know this was hashed out on the other threads a bit, but can someone please explain to me why folks are so up in arms about this, compared to, say, studies that scrape user data without consent (something the IRB allows all the time by saying that no human subjects are involved)? Is it simply because there is no visibility into this practice (i.e., no email sent?) Scraping user data from public profiles, aggregating it into a model, and publishing a paper or whatever -- that seems demonstrably more invasive to individuals, storing and keeping their user data, than an email quoting a statute.
I agree that the deception was unnecessary, but that's it. It doesn't feel any wronger than that.
Especially because these researchers really were acting in "meta" good faith trying to probe the privacy ecosystem, I fear there may be a chilling effect. Consumers deserve privacy rights and privacy knowledge in the asymmetric surveillance economy we find ourselves in, IMO.
I'm open to being wrong.