Didn't properly toot that I was at the #mastosymposium last week because I spent a few days in the hospital right after 🙃 The fever that started in Warwick didn't subside so we went to get it checked and they kept me 2 nights in observation. Hospital discharged me when i got better wednesday. Still don't know what was wrong, though they ruled out bacterial infection and other scary viruses.

Might just blame it on the excitement of meeting all the amazing fedi researchers!

the conversation at the #MastoSymposium is a reminder of @annettemarkham's point that methods are ethics and ethics are methods

The #MastoSymposium is now outside in wonderful weather talking about research ethics, gathering practices we've done and weighing them against the norms we've observed on the fediverse

Iain notes that we need ethics statements for academic tool builders.

#MastoSymposium

(I've suggested we might look at the Organization for Ethical Source for guidance here)

@sanjay_digital with a great point: ethics is not about thou shalt not. It's about building relationships, creating knowledge together

#MastoSymposium

(don't worry, I will point out that this conversation has happened already, e.g., https://apintandaparma.club/katlh/research-ethics-and-the-fediverse)

#MastoSymposium

Now we're moving to discussing a super-early draft of a statement of principles for ethical fediverse research

#MastoSymposium

Now, Iain Emsley is talking about using instance-level data to compare language used in Codes of Conduct and compare blocklists to see what patterns emerge

(not surprisingly, the phrases from Mastodon.social's COC appear across many, many instances)

#MastoSymposium

@ccamara notes they will share the survey data (they got a lot of responses!) on an open repository

#MastoSymposium

@ccamara notes that there are a lot of ways to pull data from the fediverse, but his team opted to pursue surveys because they could get consent

#MastoSymposium

Today's focus for the #MastoSymposium is on ethics and research methods and tools.

Great talk by @rwg 'The Road to AOIR.social: A critical genealogy' highlighting the struggles - esp of marginalized groups - for greater safety in opposition to flawed notions of 'openess'/free speech #mastosymposium

Here's a PDF version of the presentation I'm giving at the #MastoSymposium :

https://nextcloud.robertwgehl.org/index.php/s/G34Y5X2PoNBq5Xp​

@rra questioning the very idea that we need servers to be up 99.99% of the time. Let's rethink that in the interest of reducing energy consumption

#MastoSymposium

We made it pretty far into the #MastoSymposium before we mentioned DNS.

It's a big deal, and yet I think the fediverse, unlike, say, Tor or Freenet or I2P, is just not fighting that fight. There's only so much time!

@ueckueck

Kenntst Du das schon?

#MastoSymposium

Findet heute und morgen statt:

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/events/mastodon-research-event/

@ggow talking about the project (with @tuanle) to help NGOs break away from corporate social media.

Such necessary work. NGOs note they want to get away from CSM but don't know how.

#MastoSymposium

@aram asking the big question: what are the ethics of data scraping the fediverse?

This is asked of an author of a paper with a big dataset

#MastoSymposium

Question coming up about #Meta here at the #MastoSymposium
@Sanjay with a great favorite answer: resist them. They have bad intentions.

@rra with the pragmatic answer: let's see if they even do anything. They are famous for starting things up and not following through. And it all may just be for show for regulators.

@misc @sanjay_digital

Yes, I believe they are already up (and what we're doing here is summarizing pre-recorded presentations)

One way to find them is to look back through #MastoSymposium posts; I will look for an easier source