how are you going to ethically test whether you can manipulate people without… manipulating people.

That's a great question. In the US, researchers are generally obliged (by their universities or their funders) to use an Institutional Review Board to review any proposed experiment involving human subjects. The IRB look for things like: causing physical or emotional harm to the subjects, taking advantage of vulnerable populations, using deception without consent, etc. The IRB might let you do something like manipulate a subject, if the subjects were informed that they might be manipulated or deceived. Yes, this might introduce an observer effect, but this type of review is generally accepted as being necessary for doing ethical research. However, I'm not familiar with the research in question or with the requirements of the Univ of Zurich where the researchers are from.

from what I remember from my early psych class, manipulation can be used, but should be used carefully in an experiment.

there’s a lot that goes into designing a research experiment that tests or requires the use of manipulation, as appropriate approvals and ethics reviews are needed.

and usually it should be done in a “controlled” environment where there’s some manner of consent and compensation.

I have not read the details done here but the research does not seem to happen in a controlled env, participants had no way to express consent to opt in or opt out, and afaik they were not compensated.

any psych or social sci peeps, feel free to jump in to correct me if I say something wrong.

on a side note, another thing that this meme suggests is that both of these situations are somehow equal. IMO, they are not. researchers and academics should be expected to uphold code of ethics more so than corporations.

Can you explain your complaint a bit more? I'm trying to figure out just what you mean with your comment, but all I can see out of it is "reddit sucks". Which... yeah, but in this instance why?

.world is known (largely due to the Luigi Mangione stuff) to have moderation that's a bit more heavy handed and more similar to the sort of "corporate Internet".

No real hate for them and they've indicated in the past that some of their actions are just to comply with their local laws. But if you're looking for an older internet experience you'll wanna move to a different instance.

Well then, as lemmy's self-designated High Corvid of Progressivity, I extend to you the traditional Fediversal blessing of:

remember kids:

A place in heaven is reserved for those who speak truth to power

Lemmy is a collection of different instances with different administrators, moderators, and rules.

That's because your username is wrong. Your username is [email protected], but it should be [email protected]. That would fix your problem.

I worry that it's only better here right now because we're small and not a target. The worst we seem to get are the occasional spam bots. How are we realistically going to identify LLMs that have been trained on reddit data?