1783 cases, 137 of which with a changed view after interaction.

reddit admin also answering at 15:00

  • gencha@lemm.ee
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    2 hours ago

    How did they verify their bots are talking to humans? Have them solve captcha? You’re running a science experiment on fucking Reddit. GTFO

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    22 hours ago

    137 out of 1783 doesn’t sound conclusive at all.

    ESPECIALLY when you consider that the results are skewed to the point of uselessness by the fact that it’s against the subreddit’s rules to accuse anyone of arguing in bad faith and/or being a bot.

    It’s almost the equivalent of a study concluding that there’s no LGBTQ+ people in Uganda or Russia because they couldn’t get anyone to publicly identify as such in a country where it’s illegal for LGBTQ+ people to exist.

    • .Donuts@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      “The researchers argue that psychological manipulation of OPs on this sub is justified because the lack of existing field experiments constitutes an unacceptable gap in the body of knowledge”

      They were just convinced the end justified the means. Ethics be damned, there’s knowledge to pursue

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      They didn’t put it by one. They allege that they thought that since there were no studies in the same vein, it therefore ought to be acceptable, conveniently ignoring the fact that a lot of things that hadn’t been experimented on for the first time were later widely decried as things that never should have happened.

      I’d call them weasels, but that would be unfair to actual weasels.