Studying the disposition and demographics of forum posters is not new, nor is this a unique example. The only issue here is the forum posters believe, based on incorrect claims from the forum, that they were anonymous. But their posts were not, and this is the first time it came up publicly, because this is the first time someone looked at this particular forum, in the context of "I want to publish a paper about the demographics of this forum".
The forum users have the right to feel angry that their posts were not anonymous, but that anger should be directed at ejmr, not the academic that made it clear their posts were not.
The posts on ejmr were not fully anonymous, and nothing can change that - there are more than 10 years of posts, all of which are public, none of which are [fully] anonymous. It does not matter whether this academic collected any of the information, because in a hypothetical world where they don't and simply disclosed that none of the last decade+ forum posts are anonymous, anyone else could do exactly the same thing. This is assuming of course no one has done this in the past.
> I agree it's necessary to disclose the vulnerability to the victims (especially if ejmr wouldn't have), but it wasn't necessary collect as much data as possible themselves and write a paper about it for their own gain.
What harm do you think writing a paper on forum demographics did? I am genuinely curious, because this seems like you're still just trying to find ways to blame the gross negligence of the ejmr folk on the authors of this paper.
Studying the disposition and demographics of forum posters is not new, nor is this a unique example. The only issue here is the forum posters believe, based on incorrect claims from the forum, that they were anonymous. But their posts were not, and this is the first time it came up publicly, because this is the first time someone looked at this particular forum, in the context of "I want to publish a paper about the demographics of this forum".
The forum users have the right to feel angry that their posts were not anonymous, but that anger should be directed at ejmr, not the academic that made it clear their posts were not.
The posts on ejmr were not fully anonymous, and nothing can change that - there are more than 10 years of posts, all of which are public, none of which are [fully] anonymous. It does not matter whether this academic collected any of the information, because in a hypothetical world where they don't and simply disclosed that none of the last decade+ forum posts are anonymous, anyone else could do exactly the same thing. This is assuming of course no one has done this in the past.
> I agree it's necessary to disclose the vulnerability to the victims (especially if ejmr wouldn't have), but it wasn't necessary collect as much data as possible themselves and write a paper about it for their own gain.
What harm do you think writing a paper on forum demographics did? I am genuinely curious, because this seems like you're still just trying to find ways to blame the gross negligence of the ejmr folk on the authors of this paper.