"People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical?" is whataboutism of the worst kind. We're not talking about any other hypothetical case where a person might lie for good reasons. We're talking about this case, and the lie/misrepresentation was at the heart of why it was unethical.
Secondly, you say you don't see who was harmed - the person who posted the original blog post was clearly harmed. She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat. The fact that someone else may perhaps have not found receiving this email stressful doesn't really matter - that was the effect on her and it was harmful on its face. Remember that people have different life circumstances which affect things like this - someone who was short of money may see a legal threat with implied financial consequences such as this as an existential threat.
Secondly the people who paid money for legal advice were very clearly also harmed. Their harm has a specific monetary value.
Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park. This is about a research study which sent an email which some people saw as scammy or threatening in order to gather data about how small websites handle data subject access requests.
> We're not talking about any other hypothetical case where a person might lie for good reasons. We're talking about this case, and the lie/misrepresentation was at the heart of why it was unethical.
I don’t find this type of benign use of anonymity/misdirection to be an outright lie of the unethical kind.
> She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat.
What?! When/where? She said the request stressed her out… come on. If webmasters have panic attacks when encountering spam then perhaps we should outlaw spam (I’d support this).
> Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park.
Please… I 100% do not understand the reason why this experiment should be considered unethical and I’m trying to explain what I see as parallels. It’s not a straw man and I’m not the only one.. read down thread.
What I’m looking for is an explanation for why you think that legal normal behavior (even behavior that causes stress) is allowable but legal normal behavior for science is not allowed.
I also believe context motive and intent matter, for the record (which I why I believe censorship imposes a net negative on society, example: comedians are “allowed” to use offensive language). I simply find the intent here to be arguably ethical depending on what your goal is for society.
For example, if the goal is to never have any individual experience 1 ounce more stress than is absolutely required throughout their life, then this behavior is unethical arguably whether it’s an experiment or not but definitely in the case of the experiment because it’s unnecessary. On the other hand, if your goal as a society is to make sure people’s data privacy rights are protected, it seems strictly ethical to conduct such an exercise to raise awareness and document how well institutions comply with the law.
OP of the blog article. I didn't have a panic attack. If you want access to my private medical information and are not my doctor, you will not get it. Do not assume anything further.
Secondly, you say you don't see who was harmed - the person who posted the original blog post was clearly harmed. She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat. The fact that someone else may perhaps have not found receiving this email stressful doesn't really matter - that was the effect on her and it was harmful on its face. Remember that people have different life circumstances which affect things like this - someone who was short of money may see a legal threat with implied financial consequences such as this as an existential threat.
Secondly the people who paid money for legal advice were very clearly also harmed. Their harm has a specific monetary value.
Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park. This is about a research study which sent an email which some people saw as scammy or threatening in order to gather data about how small websites handle data subject access requests.