So I have this inquiry, which I suspect you could help me with.
A nonprofit in BC wants to look at fedi, in part to identify accounts engaged with their area of endeavour, looking for people/groups with whom to collaborate. I do not think it's possible, without violating all kinds of fedisocial norms and rules, and be compliant with profile hashtags like nobots, noscrape.
But I am not an expert. Can it be done with privacy sensitivity?
@Amgine @ai6yr Yeah similar to Ben maybe the first mission is to find out points from people but saying more.
➡️ In general I would say no as a non-profit is still a company working for state (and it's regulations and auditing) and doing things with individuals a problem in this space.
➡️ As an individual asking and advertising more details might be possible to allow people to come to you if they want.
➡️ I'd find that more acceptable to work with people but with transparency up front to almost encourage scrutiny / balance first and then individually do things.
➡️ Not any company to do things with Fedi population knowingly without their consent.
➡️ At the end it sounds like business and that stuff always ends up as a extractive container and then taken over or copied by others but done more socially individually, transparently... then maybe best version for people to come to you - rather you do things like evaluate to them.
➡️ Company vs. Individuals only always going to be troublesome.
@Amgine @freeschool Not knowing the details on this here, but the best way to do this is to have an individual set up a presence and get to know the folks already posting here on that topic and/or discuss possible plans of what they want to do, reach out to people posting on those topics. That said, I suspect the user density of people within the bounds of a "self-sufficient microgrid neighborhood" is not high enough here on the Fedi. Those user volumes might be bigger on the (terrible) corporate platforms of Nextdoor and Facebook, because of how those networks grew (ie you might have a lot of people in those areas on because they had to have a Facebook account for their kid's school group, etc.). That said, it's dreadful there is corporate ownership of all that, and I wouldn't create an account on Facebook.
Yes, and I was, I guess, playing devil's advocate there.
I have already decided I will not help the NGO do the kind of marketing research I know they really need/could use, because it is not ethical on the #Fediverse.
But I did start doing the sort of qualitative market analysis which can help their volunteers to use built-in #Fedi tools (hashtags, follows) to become more engaged with fedizens who share their own affinities already — mostly based on your previous response.
@freeschool @ai6yr
I mostly agree.
But it does raise an ethical dilemma: is it possible for a community of affinity to grow without risk or harm for its potential members?
An imaginary example: a group wanting to form a co-operative to build an energy self-sufficient microgrid neighbourhood.
They need a minimum number of 'members' to pool funds to start the process. If they do market research, they will have data on potential members; w/o it, they may never have enough to start.