> Why get so mad at these researchers—who are acting in full transparency by disclosing the study—when nefarious actors (and indeed the platforms themselves!) a

> Why get so mad at these researchers—who are acting in full transparency by disclosing the study—when nefarious actors (and indeed the platforms themselves!) are engaged in the same kind of manipulation. I’m mad at both of them. Both at the nefarious actors and the researchers. If i could I would stop both. The bad news for the researchers (and their university, and their ethics review board) they cannot publish anonymously. Or at least they can’t get the reputational boost they were hoping for. So they had to come clean. It is not like they had an option where they kept it secret and still publish their research somehow. Thus we can catch them and shame them for their unethical actions. Because this is absolutely that. If the ethics review board doesn’t understand that then their head needs to be adjusted too. I would love to stop the same the nefarious actors too! Absolutely. Unfortunately they are not so easy to catch. That doesn’t mean that i’m not mad at them. > If we don’t allow it to be studied because it is creepy They can absolutely study it. They should get study participants, pay them. Get their agreement to participate in an experiment, but tell them a fake story about what the study is about. Then do their experiment, with a private forum of their own making, and then they should de-brief their participants about what the experiment was about and in what ways were they manipulated. That is the way to do this.