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Research Note

Research note: Examining potential bias in large-scale censored data

Jennifer Allen, Markus Mobius, David M. Rothschild and Duncan J. Watts

We examine potential bias in Facebook’s 10-trillion cell URLs dataset, consisting of URLs shared on its platform and their engagement metrics. Despite the unprecedented size of the dataset, it was altered to protect user privacy in two ways: 1) by adding differentially private noise to engagement counts, and 2) by censoring the data with a 100-public-share threshold for a URL’s inclusion.

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Cable network connecting servers
Commentary

Redesigning consent: Big data, bigger risks

Joan Donovan

Over the last decade, the rapid proliferation of social media platforms coupled with the advancement of computational methods for collecting, processing, and analyzing big datasets created new opportunities for social science. But alongside new insights about the behaviors of individuals and groups, these practices raise new questions regarding what constitutes ethical research.

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