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In this article, Zed demonstrates one of the tremendous screwups with the academic human trials system: actions that are perfectly acceptable normally suddenly

In this article, Zed demonstrates one of the tremendous screwups with the academic human trials system: actions that are perfectly acceptable normally suddenly become a problem if done for science. I.e., if I personally want to pay people $5 to play a video game, and then pay them $10 if they win, there is absolutely nothing preventing me from doing this. I can also gather statistics on the result. But if I were a scientist at a university doing this, I'd suddenly need to get permission from an IRB. This is a flaw with academia, not Riot Games. The comparison to the Stanford Prison Experiment is nonsense. That experiment literally locked people in jail, an action that is generally illegal in general. This experiment literally involves nothing more than a group of people statistically accessing records they have legal permission to access and then doing some math. Note that I say this with no positive feelings whatsoever about Riot Game's PC-police behavior. I don't generally favor "no-asshole rules", or any of the other feelings-over-facts policies currently favored by the PC-left. [edit: since folks reading this clearly think I'm criticizing Zed's entire post, Zed has 8 arguments against Riot. I'm disputing (3) and (4) only.]

vonklaus 10y ago
I like Zed Shaw, his writing and learncodethehardway. I am not sure I agree with someof his conclusions here but I am not sure yours are correct. One of the key issues for me, Shaw and many others based on comments, is lack of explicit permission. Most academic studies get explicit permission but they also anonymize the data. They also are objective researchers who do not take negative action against their subjects based on the results of their paper/findings. For me, this hinges on how much was communicated to the employees and how it was handled internally. I do not have information about that which is broad and reliable so I won't speculate on the actual decision. However, Zed is a hilarious and prolific writer and always has an agenda. If his rhetoric was an overreach or not entirely sound, it doesnt discount that the area between playing a competitive game with assumed privacy and professiomal overlap as an employee at the company is pretty gray. tl;dr * Academia is flawed * Riot games decision making process is flawed * neither of these have a causal relationship * Rails is a ghetto
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  So if you run some statistics and then use the result, that's somehow unethical? Riot's decisionmaking process may be flawed - I have no evidence of this, but my prior is that it's likely (same as Zed). If this is true, they are firing good employees and costing themselves money. But the fact that they didn't obey ridiculous university IRB requirements is NOT really a good argument against them. And that's all I'm criticizing.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    I took his article and the analogies to point out that these studies must get approval before engaging subjects. He also states that the law requires explicit permission unless it is on or using company property. Idk the legal requirements, but I thin, to underscore my previous point (and how I interpreted zsfa) that the issue is in how counterparties agree and the obligations they owe to one another. I also find myself agreeing that it would be difficult to charchterize snarky. Although, I suspect that they say snarky but mean using racial slurs and other threatening language. Clearly, saying horrible things to people is not positive but free speech is more important. I find in super reasonable that someone with a tagged Riot employee un shouting racial epithets gets fired. However, a private personal account without explicit consent should probably enjoy the expectation of privacy. super complicated issue, however, I believe many people would look at this differently if it came out that every employee was told, signed paperwork, and was aware that it would be company policy to monitor and enforce known etiquette with known repetcussions edit: also there have been studies that show people behave differently when watched. It seems reasonable simply telling everyone about this policy would bring about the desired results.
ivraatiems 10y ago
The premise "anything that's not illegal should be acceptable in scientific research" is flawed. Research has to be verifiable to be valid, and therefore must be held to a higher standard (both ethically and technically) than casual study. But more importantly: There was no IRB here. Zed is arguing that this action is illegal and unethical in an employment context, not a research context. There's a world of difference between "take this $5 and play this game for me" and "take this $5 and play this game for me and while you do I'll rifle through your phone without telling you. It's okay, because I'm paying you." That latter example is closer to what's happening here. The fact that Riot is the holder of the data doesn't make their use of the data ethical or legal.
colorrose 10y ago
Riot games moves people to Santa Monica where rent on a two bedroom is $4K/month, pays them the same amount they will make elsewhere, and then fires them for weird shit after they already have a lease on an apartment, and you think that's unlike the Stanford prison experiment? Those people will likely take a year or more to recover from the financial disaster of working for that company.

vonklaus 10y ago

I like Zed Shaw, his writing and learncodethehardway. I am not sure I agree with someof his conclusions here but I am not sure yours are correct. One of the key issues for me, Shaw and many others based on comments, is lack of explicit permission. Most academic studies get explicit permission but they also anonymize the data. They also are objective researchers who do not take negative action against their subjects based on the results of their paper/findings. For me, this hinges on how much was communicated to the employees and how it was handled internally. I do not have information about that which is broad and reliable so I won't speculate on the actual decision. However, Zed is a hilarious and prolific writer and always has an agenda. If his rhetoric was an overreach or not entirely sound, it doesnt discount that the area between playing a competitive game with assumed privacy and professiomal overlap as an employee at the company is pretty gray. tl;dr * Academia is flawed * Riot games decision making process is flawed * neither of these have a causal relationship * Rails is a ghetto

yummyfajitas 10y ago
So if you run some statistics and then use the result, that's somehow unethical? Riot's decisionmaking process may be flawed - I have no evidence of this, but my prior is that it's likely (same as Zed). If this is true, they are firing good employees and costing themselves money. But the fact that they didn't obey ridiculous university IRB requirements is NOT really a good argument against them. And that's all I'm criticizing.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  I took his article and the analogies to point out that these studies must get approval before engaging subjects. He also states that the law requires explicit permission unless it is on or using company property. Idk the legal requirements, but I thin, to underscore my previous point (and how I interpreted zsfa) that the issue is in how counterparties agree and the obligations they owe to one another. I also find myself agreeing that it would be difficult to charchterize snarky. Although, I suspect that they say snarky but mean using racial slurs and other threatening language. Clearly, saying horrible things to people is not positive but free speech is more important. I find in super reasonable that someone with a tagged Riot employee un shouting racial epithets gets fired. However, a private personal account without explicit consent should probably enjoy the expectation of privacy. super complicated issue, however, I believe many people would look at this differently if it came out that every employee was told, signed paperwork, and was aware that it would be company policy to monitor and enforce known etiquette with known repetcussions edit: also there have been studies that show people behave differently when watched. It seems reasonable simply telling everyone about this policy would bring about the desired results.

ivraatiems 10y ago

The premise "anything that's not illegal should be acceptable in scientific research" is flawed. Research has to be verifiable to be valid, and therefore must be held to a higher standard (both ethically and technically) than casual study. But more importantly: There was no IRB here. Zed is arguing that this action is illegal and unethical in an employment context, not a research context. There's a world of difference between "take this $5 and play this game for me" and "take this $5 and play this game for me and while you do I'll rifle through your phone without telling you. It's okay, because I'm paying you." That latter example is closer to what's happening here. The fact that Riot is the holder of the data doesn't make their use of the data ethical or legal.

colorrose 10y ago

Riot games moves people to Santa Monica where rent on a two bedroom is $4K/month, pays them the same amount they will make elsewhere, and then fires them for weird shit after they already have a lease on an apartment, and you think that's unlike the Stanford prison experiment? Those people will likely take a year or more to recover from the financial disaster of working for that company.