When funding is uncertain and regulations are constantly changing, a certain kind of silence descends upon a university research lab. These days, you can hear it in the corridors of social science departments, where PhD candidates who used to speak candidly about scraping anonymized app data now use qualifiers and lower their voices. The work is still ongoing. However, there has been a noticeable shift in the way people discuss it.
The majority of the data protection laws being drafted or revised by governments in dozens of nations heavily reference the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. It makes sense. The GDPR mandates that businesses safeguard EU citizens’ personal information and privacy in relation to transactions taking place within EU member states, and this template has become the standard worldwide. For example, Jordan moved toward its own framework with the Data Privacy and Protection Bill, 2020, and a study that examined it found that the Draft Law will need major changes before it can support the current level of legislation. In policy circles, the phrase “significant amendments” is frequently used. Who pays the difference while those amendments are being debated is a topic that is rarely discussed.
Researchers that study behavior do. They use observed behavior, which is frequently digital, as their raw material because they study how people actually behave rather than how they claim to act. The standard architecture of these laws, including fundamental data protection principles and rights for data subjects, is outlined in a UNDP guide created by the Center for Communication Governance at National Law University Delhi. On its face, none of that is antagonistic to science. How broadly consent must be obtained, how narrowly data may be reused, and whether a dataset gathered for one study can ever inform another are the details that cause friction.
When it comes to consent, things really get complicated. The goal of the regulation is to give users total control over their data; as a result, businesses would not be able to collect any data from users without their prior consent. In theory, lovely. However, behavioral science has long relied on some degree of indirectness because subjects’ behavior is altered when you tell them exactly what you’re measuring. The new bills, which were primarily drafted with advertising surveillance in mind, don’t seem to have taken into account researchers standing quietly in the corner. There is a genuine conflict between valid observation and informed consent.
Perhaps even worse is the platform issue. Recent research has demonstrated why existing informed consent procedures are insufficient and how default platform settings prioritize disclosure over user control. Therefore, a data broker is not slowed down by the same consent regime that restricts a cautious academic. The legitimate channels narrow while the murky ones remain wide open, according to investigators looking into financial behavior or disinformation. For a law intended to level the playing field, this is an odd result.
Admittedly, some of the anxiety might be premature. Laws are settled. Many frameworks already have, albeit ambiguously worded, exemptions for statistical and academic research. It’s still unclear whether the chilling effect that researchers report is primarily the discomfort of an incomplete transition or a true structural issue. Many disciplines have adopted new regulations and continued to advance. Speaking with those in the field gives me the impression that they anticipate adapting rather than collapsing.
Nevertheless, it is important to state clearly that something is being traded. Vague and inconsistent ethical guidelines leave potential gray areas that result in privacy, ethical, and data breaches that need to be addressed, according to one analysis of emerging technologies. Researchers are left wondering what is allowed due to the same ambiguity. The authors of these bills are largely attempting to do something respectable, and privacy is a true human right, not a technicality. However, understanding human behavior is also a public good that is acquired gradually and quickly lost.
It’s not that anyone is acting dishonestly as I watch this play out. People who don’t often sit in the same room are weighing two reasonable things, and the quieter interest usually loses out. The legislation will be approved. The labs will thin out or adapt. It will likely take years to determine which was more important.
