This is yet another case of an IRB basically deciding that people on the internet aren't real: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1k8b2hj/meta_unauthorized_experiment_on_cmv_involving/

I am reminded of the University of Minnesota experiment a few years ago that sent deliberately bad patches to the Linux kernel, and the IRB decided this wasn't "human experimentation" so no consent was necessary: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-source

This should be obvious to everybody in the year 2025, but if it would be unethical to involuntarily subject a visitor to your campus to an experiment, then it is also unethical to do it on a message board or email list. You cannot enroll subjects in interventional studies without their consent. This should be absolutely clear to everyone on the IRB. But because you put the Internet in the middle, somehow they end up deciding it's OK after all.

You also should not perform experiments that violate the rules of the space you're operating in! That's also an ethical principle. These boundaries are also not less real because they are on the Internet.

#irb_failure #ConsentMatters

We are now deporting children with cancer without a hearing, without their medication. Children. Say again, "We are a country that deports innocent children ill with with metastatic cancer."

https://open.substack.com/pub/america/p/how-much-injustice-will-americans?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=720gx

I'm seeing many people ask questions like "where are the people who are supposed to stop this?" and "what can *I* do about this?" I believe this sentiment is a symptom of the way our institutions are structured to deny us the lived experience of direct action.

The structures of liberal and capitalist institutions have so deeply taken over that most people in the US never even interact with a directly democratic institution, let alone become accustomed to making decisions that way.

I think there's a psychological consequence to never making decisions together in an assembly. We only ever experience taking and giving orders, buying products, and casting votes. We never learn the skills needed to act for ourselves, together. We never feel what it's like to build power together. We don't even know how to begin because we don't have an institutional toe-hold in our neighborhoods or workplaces. Our institutions have left us atomized and disempowered and we feel that helplessness in times like this.

#liberalism #capitalism #democracy #socialism