> 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.