As quoted from the linked post.
It looks like you’re part of one of our experiments. The logged-in mobile web experience is currently unavailable for a portion of users. To access the site you can log on via desktop, the mobile apps, or wait for the experiment to conclude.
This is separate from the API issue. This will actually BLOCK you from even viewing reddit on your phone without using the official app.
Archive.org link in case the post is removed.
Thank you for providing examples of specific language used in regulating research ethics! It confirms my suspicion that the type of experiments done by big companies on their users violates most if not every single one of these requirements. Here’s my take on it:
If it were A/B testing of simple things like whether the “buy now!” link is underlined or not, I’d agree. But the situation linked in OP is exactly of a user who was so upset by unexpected behavior secretly thrust upon him that he had to go online to ask others for help, wondering whether he was just stupid and doing something repeatedly wrong. Yes, he was not literally infected with syphilis by shady doctors, but emotional harm is very much real, and risk of it in hindsight was not minimal. Or that experiment Facebook did with shadowbanning people at random to see whether their feelings of depression would increase - WTF?
Research involving deception is carried out all the time and researchers still manage to get consent in advance. They just don’t tell you ahead of time exactly what kind of deception will take place. In tech, the companies definitely have the option for an OPT-IN experiment program. Firefox for example has a “nightly” version for users who opt in to download it and want to test out the latest features and sometimes participate in A/B experiments. The companies CHOOSE not to do it, preferring to experiment on innocent unwitting users at large, because *gasp* there is no law stopping them.
The victims of corporate A/B testing are typically never informed after the fact. Again there is no law requiring it. The user in OP only found out because he started asking around online, and one of the admins just happened to see it. Don’t kid yourself hoping he would have been informed afterwards otherwise. The admin was not acting as a pertinent legally authorized representative for purposes of this question. Much more likely he was acting beyond his authorization, and would be disciplined for this unauthorized disclosure and his response would be deleted if it ever became trouble for the company.
Was never asked, does not apply.
More than minimal risk of harm, unless you are sociopathic enough to believe emotional harm is not real. Also odd that corporations that love to thrust EULA missives at you to sign all the time just happen to choose a written-consent-to-experiment-form as not “normally required”. A consent to random experiments on page 132 of EULA is not informed.
Does not apply.
Watching server logs for traffic patterns is fine. It counts as observation of public behavior for me. Actively interfering with users by thrusting them into atypical situations like randomly shadowbanning them is not.
True, if it’s not for generalizable knowledge then it’s not “research” covered under 45 CFR 46.101. Which is why what the corporations are doing is not literally illegal. But if I walk around testing how close I can swing my fist to passersby’s noses without hitting them, I’m not in the clear based on “hurr durr technically it’s not research because it’s not generalizable so it’s not covered by ethics standards”, I’m just an asshole.
By the way, here’s how the link defines minimal risk:
Is the “reddit mobile web not working for no reason causing me discomfort” typical in ordinary daily life? It would be a very cynical outlook on the quality of their own product for reddit admins to claim that it is! :D
> But the situation linked in OP is exactly of a user who was so upset by unexpected behavior secretly thrust upon him that he had to go online to ask others for help
You will need to convince the IRB that such an outcome is more than just minimal risk. The very definition of minimal risk refers to the probability and magnitude of harm. Being unable to use a website unexpectedly or being prompted to sign up for an account before being able to view something is very much not a kind of “harm” that is greater than those ordinary encountered in daily life, no more different than accidentally spilling some creamer on a granite tabletop or realizing one forgot their keys and got locked out of their room.
We can torture the words as much as we want to lead to a particular interpretation, but by and large these are not the kind of word meanderings that IRBs tolerate.
I’ve read the rest of your comment and my primary issue is your take on it and the subsequent interpretation(s) are not how these policies and practices are implemented, interpreted, and actioned at IRBs nationally.
For example, this is how Indiana University guides researchers for making exempt determinations when reaching out to their IRB. University of South Carolina’s IRB provides explicit examples.
Firefox’s approach to its in-browser experiments is very much in line with desired and ethical research practices, in so far as we view Mozilla as a privacy-first organization. The availability and “opt-in” to a nightly build is not considered research.
Your contention with not being provided information after the experiment is qualified with “whenever appropriate” and “additional pertinent information”. Debriefing after a deception study is very much appropriate and considered required. However, these are considerations in context of waiving informed consent. I would also point out that “legally authorized representative” in this phrasing refers to people who are legally designated as a representative of the subject, and not the admin of the site in question. For example (broadly), minors cannot legally satisfy “informed consent”, therefore their legally authorized representative, like their parent or legal guardian, are those who sign the forms on behalf of their children. Adolescents may qualify for informed assent. There’s a whole set of additional considerations that experiments much consider for when working with adolescents who reach the age of majority during the research process in context of this.
The waiving of the requirement to document informed consent requires any of the listed qualifications apply, not all. No one is saying that emotional harm is not real, but rather the contention is whether the kind of emotional harm that comes from being forced to log-in to view a website is so significant of a magnitude that it rises above the kind of everyday “harm” experienced in ordinary life. Can you demonstrate that this is the case?
The rest of the discussion about shadowbanning from Facebook and/or other related things are interesting comments but not the point I am making.
Rather, my point is if you replicated the exact same experiment Reddit runs on a University academic setting, it is highly unlikely you will be run out of the university by the IRB from doing so. My point is that, NO, you will NOT be run out of an academic research institute by their IRB for doing something like what Reddit did here, and the way the IRB determines minimum risk and exemptions is part of the reason why, because this specific experiment largely meets many of the metrics for it.
To iterate again, being unable to view the content of a webpage without logging may lead to some discomfort, but this discomfort is not going to rise up to any meaningful level to lead to most IRBs to call it as greater than minimal risk. We can of course twist the situation to make it so, but torturing the very situation to achieve a particular interpretation does not fly with IRB review.
As for Facebook’s psychological manipulation of its users? They can go shove it, honestly.