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13 Colo. Tech. L.J. 219 (2015)
The Law and Ethics of Experiments on Social Media Users

handle is hein.journals/jtelhtel13 and id is 243 raw text is: THE LAW AND ETHICS OF EXPERIMENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA USERS JAMES GRIMMELMANN* I. T H E R ESEA RCH ....................................................................................................... 2 2 1 II. T H E COM M ON R U LE ............................................................................................ 22 5 A. Research with Human Participants .............................................. 229 1 . research .. . .............................................................. ................ 2 2 9 2. ... involving human subjects ....................... 231 3. Social Science Research ........................................................... 232 4. Quality Improvement ............................................................... 233 5. Funding Sources ......................................................................... 235 6 . E n gagem en t .................................................................................. 2 38 B. Inform ed Consent ................................................................................ 243 1. T erm s of Service ......................................................................... 244 2. Waiving or Altering Informed Consent ............................ 247 C. IR B R eview .............................................................................................. 2 5 0 1. Facebook and OkCupid ............................................................ 251 2. Cornell and PN A S ....................................................................... 252 III. M OVING FORW ARD ............................................................................................ 253 A . IR B Laundering .................................................................................... 255 B. Toward a Framework for Social Media Experiments ............ 258 1. Scope of Regulation ................................................................... 260 2. Inform ed Consent ...................................................................... 262 3 . IR B R ev iew .................................................................................... 2 6 3 4 . G atekeep ers .................................................................................. 2 6 5 IV . C O N CLU SIO N ........................................................................................................ 2 6 7 If you were on Facebook in January 2012, there is a chance that it tried to make you sad. If you were on OkCupid, there is a chance that it tried to match you up with someone incompatible. These were social psychology experiments: Facebook and OkCupid systematically manipulated people's environments to test their reactions. Academics doing similar experiments in a university setting would typically need to obtain informed consent from participants and approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB). But Facebook and OkCupid, and the academics working with 219

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