In a word, yes. To be sure, there are wonderful potentials and promising opportunities here. And the academic players involved, from my perspective, are clearly first rate. But given the platform's rather dreadful record on privacy matters (to put it charitably) and the comparatively weaker privacy protections and culture of the U.S. more broadly, it is more than reasonable to voice these concerns at the very outset. Thanks for an excellent list, kalev. I very much hope that those involved in this new initiative will be able to take these - and related - concerns on board from the outset. best, - charles ess Co-chair, AoIR Ethics Working Group On 17/04/2018 18:00, kalev leetaru wrote:

With respect to the Facebook/SSRC initiative, it will be very interesting to see how the ethical landscape of such unprecedented researcher access to Facebook plays out. In my interview with SSRC about the new effort, Alondra noted that SSRC has not ruled out academic researchers being permitted to access private posts, photographs, videos, Messenger chats and other private communications and that the question of how to robustly anonymize such content for the initiative (given that even blurring faces in a photograph cannot prevent the identities of the depicted individuals from being reconstructed in all cases, video anonymization is even more difficult and even anonymized text chats can still reveal considerable PII) is still unknown.

As the first studies emerge from the initiative that make heavy use of private content that Facebook's two billion users thought were private, it is unclear whether public reaction will yield any changes to this program or lead to its discontinuation in its present form.

There is also the question of how replication will be managed on a platform as fluid as Facebook, especially given that activists may engage in systematic deletions when papers are published that expose and document certain of their communicative patterns. Either replication must accept that key content may be systematically deleted in some cases (especially for controversial high profile studies that are the kind that might provoke such a response) or Facebook will have to permanently archive user data, removing the right of users to delete or control access to their content, which creates an uncertain legal landscape.

SSRC also did not rule out permitting researchers to actively manipulate production interfaces and algorithms for actual users during an active election (ie, an algorithmic change that would test whether favoring certain content had an impact on voter behavior), nor did it rule out permitting researchers in one country to perform such active experimentation during another country's elections.

The first contested election where you've got papers being published in a foreign country documenting active modification to Facebook during the election and claiming that some of those changes altered voter behavior, there is an increased likelihood of governmental intervention in this initiative, especially in an era when candidates and campaigns increasingly blame Facebook for unexpected voter outcomes.

There is also the issue that while proposals will be directly funded by a small set of funding agencies, it is extremely likely that research labs with substantial DOD funding (whether DARPA, IARPA, NRL, ARL, and foreign counterparts globally) will submit proposals stemming from that work. For example, DOD-funded academic work in the social sciences has routinely cited private Facebook Messenger and post data as being critical to increasing the accuracy of their models. One can easily imagine labs participating in IARPA or DARPA programs submitting proposals to the SSRC initiative that extend that IARPA/DARPA work to private Facebook user data. SSRC offered that there are not presently any restrictions on this codified into the initiative.

So, while I know this initiative has received a lot of fawning press and academic reaction, its important that we not lose sight of the ethical components of the initiative, especially given that nearly the entirety of the ethical underpinnings are, in the words of SSRC, "TBD":

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/04/12/is-facebooks-new-academ...

Kalev

On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 11:09 AM, Steven Clift <slc@publicus.net> wrote:

...

In recent weeks, you've probably heard <http://po.st/chronphilsocmedia> about Facebook's connection <http://po.st/zucksocmediademo> to an independent foundation funded <http://po.st/socdemknight> (multiple foundations <http://po.st/socdemhewlett>) effort to research the impact <http://po.st/socdemssrc> of social media on elections and democracy. That's great. There is even a related conference this week <http://po.st/socdemconference> with an amazing list of academic speakers.

I am interested opening up digital channels of communication to help researchers hear from practitioners to help generate more actionable research related to social media and democracy.

Whether you are a democracy/civic engagement practitioner, a political campaign operative, or an activist seeking to influence people or your government, what is happening *now* with social media and democracy that needs solid research? If you care about useful research, this group is for you.

Perhaps you are within government having used social media to help win an election or you are in media looking for trends or digital options to boost journalism's role in the future of democracy, then this *off the record* group on social media and democracy research is for you too.

(If you know practitioners active in the digital democracy/politics/media space who also care about the big picture as well as "winning" with the latest tactic or tool, please pass this invite along.)

Researchers invited!

This is about creating an effective digital feedback loop. I am interested in how researchers can more effectively engage and access digital practitioners across all the major sectors of democracy - government, media, campaigns and elections, advocacy and legislative bodies, and more. Since Facebook is the main target of a wave of research funding, let's build a digital bridge between research and practice that people actually use on that platform. So, if you do research in this space, please apply to join us. Once we reach 100 charter members, then we will switch to a member referral required to join process (which will be crucial to ensure participation versus free riding.)

So, if you are interested in joining, you *must* answer the join request survey questions before your application will be approved: http://facebook.com/groups/socialmediademocracy

Thanks, Steven Clift

P.S. If you just prefer light reading and not participating actively, everyone is welcome to join my 7500+ member Civic Technology and Open Government Facebook Group. It is a very active group with daily posts: http://facebook.com/groups/opengovgroup

Steven Clift - Executive Director, E-Democracy.org clift@e-democracy.org - +1 612 234 7072 http://twitter.com/democracy

Join in: http://facebook.com/groups/opengovgroup Digital engagement for your org via E-Democracy: http://po.st/engageclift _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no

Charles, the issue is not whether there are good players or not working on the initiative, the issue is that for all the talk about ethics, for all the initiatives and grants and discussions, ethics is still a second class citizen that is always "TBD" after all the exciting "what can we do with all this data" discussion has happened. For all the luminaries and prestigious organizations and funders involved and all the talk about what will be possible under the new initiative, why is it that absolutely every single last question about ethics is TBD? Replication, publication review, funding, process - all of that has at least basic detail sketched out in the new initiative. Everything that has to do with how do researchers get their hands on all this amazing data, at least has very basic outlines around it. Ethics? That's all TBD to be figured out later. That's the real problem here - its that for all the great talk about ethics, where is all of that with this new initiative? Most importantly, its not enough to blame Facebook in this case. Where was the academic leadership from those crafting the new initiative and their institutions and from SSRC to lay out at the very onset a set of basic principles that are codified into the new initiative that show that it is at least acknowledging and taking these issues seriously? Putting into writing right up front that certain kinds of activities are too ethically fraught to permit? Or if the belief is that all ethics are situational and even the most fraught questions should be weighted against societal benefit, that should be codified, along with guiding principles. If the latter, then why didn't the initiative have a set of basic "ethical principles" that don't constrain what can be done, but at the very least set out the ethical vision of the initiative, reassure the public whose data is being used, and codifies in writing from the outset the behaviors that will require the greatest attention (much as IRB guidance lists specific areas of concern without absolutely prohibiting them)? For all the copious discussion of replication in the initiative's whitepaper, which came from academia, not Facebook, there is no discussion of the ethical implications of preserving all that data and the conflict between replication and user rights to delete their content. Not once does "consent" or "permission" make a single appearance in the entire academic whitepaper, except once, to note Facebook's permission being required. All of the discussion is about the tremendous value of this treasure trove of data to academics, but precious little mention of what are the implications for privacy and the right of individuals to control access to their information. For all the academic criticism of Facebook performing research on its users without their knowledge or informed consent (for example its emotions study), now we have academia lining up to perform their own research without the knowledge or informed consent of Facebook's users. That's the problem here - for all academia's talk, all the working groups and conferences and grants and initiatives and condemnations, at the end of the day little has changed and in 2018 we have a new data initiative, built not by Facebook and released to the world with zero academic input, but rather quite the opposite. This was built by academia by, as you note, first rate luminaries and with top organizations like SSRC and major funders all involved and yet absolutely every single question regarding ethics, user protections, informed consent, user control over their PII, etc, are all TBD. Not even a basic vision of ethical principles is presented. We can't keep blaming this on Facebook. Here's an initiative come out of academia involving the key luminaries of the field and yet the entirety of its ethical underpinnings are "TBD." Focus on outcomes first, then worry about ethics down the road. Academia had an opportunity in this initiative to build an ethics-first data access program that demonstrates to companies like Facebook what it looks like to build a program where ethical considerations drive the effort, rather than "wow what can we do with all of this data" and it didn't. For all the time and effort paid on the replication workflow, where was the corresponding effort spent on ethics? Even just an announcement in the whitepaper that a special ethical advisory board consisting of X, Y, and Z organizations and ethical luminaries A, B, and C has already been launched and is drafting the initial ethical guidelines for the initiative that codify a set of basic written "ethical principles" codified into the initiative's charter would have gone a long way towards at least offering that ethics was viewed as important to the initiative. As I wrote last year summarizing the data ethics landscape ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/10/16/is-it-too-late-for-big-...), for all the talk about ethics, I'm not sure academia really views ethics as anything more than something to tack onto the end of a project? After all, large funders like Gates have committed to open access, but offered that they are uninterested in open ethics. NSF doesn't make even basic non-sensitive IRB information available even upon request and nearly every institution I've asked has refused to make even the most basic of detail available about their large data-driven projects, including just confirming whether the project even underwent IRB review at all. Here was an opportunity to change that, and instead we have an initiative that entrenches that ethics-last approach. And Sonia, absolutely hear you regarding the issue of childrens' data being scooped up in this. In fact, I note in my piece, even if protections were put in place to try and filter out minor accounts (including those by minors who falsify their age) the fact that people's private photographs, Messenger chats and posts will likely contain copious PII of their children, including biometrics, their medical issues, psychological development, etc mean children will factor heavily into the datasets being analyzed without additional "TBD" precautions. Kalev On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 3:46 AM, Livingstone,S <S.Livingstone@lse.ac.uk> wrote:

Some of the data being harvested by researchers through the techniques below are from children. I still hope to hear explicit recognition of and attention to this fact in discussions of researcher ethics. Best, Sonia

...

On 18 Apr 2018, at 06:32, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:

In a word, yes.

To be sure, there are wonderful potentials and promising opportunities here. And the academic players involved, from my perspective, are clearly first rate. But given the platform's rather dreadful record on privacy matters (to put it charitably) and the comparatively weaker privacy protections and culture of the U.S. more broadly, it is more than reasonable to voice these concerns at the very outset.

Thanks for an excellent list, kalev. I very much hope that those involved in this new initiative will be able to take these - and related - concerns on board from the outset.

best, - charles ess Co-chair, AoIR Ethics Working Group

...

On 17/04/2018 18:00, kalev leetaru wrote: With respect to the Facebook/SSRC initiative, it will be very interesting to see how the ethical landscape of such unprecedented researcher access to Facebook plays out. In my interview with SSRC about the new effort, Alondra noted that SSRC has not ruled out academic researchers being permitted to access private posts, photographs, videos, Messenger chats and other private communications and that the question of how to robustly anonymize such content for the initiative (given that even blurring faces in a photograph cannot prevent the identities of the depicted individuals from being reconstructed in all cases, video anonymization is even more difficult and even anonymized text chats can still reveal considerable PII) is still unknown. As the first studies emerge from the initiative that make heavy use of private content that Facebook's two billion users thought were private, it is unclear whether public reaction will yield any changes to this program or lead to its discontinuation in its present form. There is also the question of how replication will be managed on a platform as fluid as Facebook, especially given that activists may engage in systematic deletions when papers are published that expose and document certain of their communicative patterns. Either replication must accept that key content may be systematically deleted in some cases (especially for controversial high profile studies that are the kind that might provoke such a response) or Facebook will have to permanently archive user data, removing the right of users to delete or control access to their content, which creates an uncertain legal landscape. SSRC also did not rule out permitting researchers to actively manipulate production interfaces and algorithms for actual users during an active election (ie, an algorithmic change that would test whether favoring certain content had an impact on voter behavior), nor did it rule out permitting researchers in one country to perform such active experimentation during another country's elections. The first contested election where you've got papers being published in a foreign country documenting active modification to Facebook during the election and claiming that some of those changes altered voter behavior, there is an increased likelihood of governmental intervention in this initiative, especially in an era when candidates and campaigns increasingly blame Facebook for unexpected voter outcomes. There is also the issue that while proposals will be directly funded by a small set of funding agencies, it is extremely likely that research labs with substantial DOD funding (whether DARPA, IARPA, NRL, ARL, and foreign counterparts globally) will submit proposals stemming from that work. For example, DOD-funded academic work in the social sciences has routinely cited private Facebook Messenger and post data as being critical to increasing the accuracy of their models. One can easily imagine labs participating in IARPA or DARPA programs submitting proposals to the SSRC initiative that extend that IARPA/DARPA work to private Facebook user data. SSRC offered that there are not presently any restrictions on this codified into the initiative. So, while I know this initiative has received a lot of fawning press and academic reaction, its important that we not lose sight of the ethical components of the initiative, especially given that nearly the entirety of the ethical underpinnings are, in the words of SSRC, "TBD": https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/04/12/is- facebooks-new-academic-initiative-even-more-frightening-than-its-own- research/ Kalev

...

On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 11:09 AM, Steven Clift <slc@publicus.net> wrote: In recent weeks, you've probably heard <http://po.st/chronphilsocmedia

...

...

about Facebook's connection <http://po.st/zucksocmediademo> to an independent foundation funded <http://po.st/socdemknight> (multiple foundations <http://po.st/socdemhewlett>) effort to research the impact <http://po.st/socdemssrc> of social media on elections and democracy. That's great. There is even a related conference this week <http://po.st/socdemconference> with an amazing list of academic speakers.

I am interested opening up digital channels of communication to help researchers hear from practitioners to help generate more actionable research related to social media and democracy.

Whether you are a democracy/civic engagement practitioner, a political campaign operative, or an activist seeking to influence people or your government, what is happening *now* with social media and democracy that needs solid research? If you care about useful research, this group is for you.

Perhaps you are within government having used social media to help win an election or you are in media looking for trends or digital options to boost journalism's role in the future of democracy, then this *off the record* group on social media and democracy research is for you too.

(If you know practitioners active in the digital democracy/politics/media space who also care about the big picture as well as "winning" with the latest tactic or tool, please pass this invite along.)

Researchers invited!

This is about creating an effective digital feedback loop. I am interested in how researchers can more effectively engage and access digital practitioners across all the major sectors of democracy - government, media, campaigns and elections, advocacy and legislative bodies, and more. Since Facebook is the main target of a wave of research funding, let's build a digital bridge between research and practice that people actually use on that platform. So, if you do research in this space, please apply to join us. Once we reach 100 charter members, then we will switch to a member referral required to join process (which will be crucial to ensure participation versus free riding.)

So, if you are interested in joining, you *must* answer the join request survey questions before your application will be approved: http://facebook.com/groups/socialmediademocracy

Thanks, Steven Clift

P.S. If you just prefer light reading and not participating actively, everyone is welcome to join my 7500+ member Civic Technology and Open Government Facebook Group. It is a very active group with daily posts: http://facebook.com/groups/opengovgroup

Steven Clift - Executive Director, E-Democracy.org clift@e-democracy.org - +1 612 234 7072 http://twitter.com/democracy

Join in: http://facebook.com/groups/opengovgroup Digital engagement for your org via E-Democracy: http://po.st/engageclift _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>

Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/