> Reddit violates ALL of these example rules.

No.

>> minors use reddit and there is no indication that reddit experiments exclude them. Minors are not prohibited on the site and there is no tracking of age other than the vague “show me NSFW results” checkbox

Strictly speaking, COPPA prevents Reddit from collecting information from users under the age of 13. While there are no explicit guarantees that a person on the site isn’t 13 or older, and also recognizing that age of majority is typically 18, then in a general literal sense yes there are minors involved, in so far as the activity discussed is research.

>> intervention is not brief, has lasted a week or more

A research intervention is an intervention in so far as it intersects with the participant. A drug trial that lasts for 10 weeks total but only gives doses to participants for 2 weeks (and then results monitoring during, 2-weeks post, and 4-weeks post) does not mean that the “intervention” lasts 10 weeks.

In most practical terms, running an experiment for 2-3 weeks is very common to collect sufficient data. However, the intervention itself may be quite brief (for example, a short 45-minute interview with a participant would be the “intervention” for a 2-3 week long study interviewing physicians on their concerns about organizational capacity for change).

For a repeated measures experiment, the intervention usually involves the actual experiment encounter and maybe some additional time between them.

For the case of A/B testing, usually the “intervention” in this case is the A/B test as it applies to the user at the moment, and not the entire duration of when the testing is taking place for all participants.

>> interventions having harm

Once again, to iterate, you are equating the inability to view the content of a website without logging into an account with such substantial emotional and psychological harm that is comparable to being verbally derided in public, for a week, shamed on a public channel, and/or comparable situations. You are not going to convince an IRB that being able to view the content of a website without logging in, then subsequently going to a different community to ask for help, and then hypothetically ruminate about the matter for weeks, is going to exceed the kind of everyday ordinary harm to qualify a risk level above minimal risk.

>> the subject was deceived and was definitely not informed prospectively that deception may take place, neither has agreed to it; subject was not informed even retrospectively other than some random admin suggesting they were part of an experiment after they complained online; for that matter the subject was not informed that an experiment would be taking place at all and has never agreed to anything, other than possibly in the ToS.

Deception goes beyond simply “lying” to or “not informing” the participant. Duke University gives some good considerations here:

• If, in order to counter the demand effect, researchers cannot disclose their research hypotheses, the failure to disclose is not considered deception.
• General statements about the purpose of the research, as well as a full description of the research tasks and activities, should be provided in the consent form. (emphasis, should, not must).

Additionally, a waiver for utilizing deception in research has to:

1. The risk must be no more than minimal.
2. The rights and welfare of the subjects will not be adversely affected.
3. The research could not practicably be carried out without the waiver. This does not mean that it would be inconvenient to conduct the study without the waiver. It means that deception is necessary to accomplish the goals of the research.

Satisfying #1 and #2 in an UI/UX A/B testing regime that Reddit used here is pretty easy. You are specifically hung up on the implicit harms involved but in reality they are of no particular serious concern.

#3 is particularly interesting, because effectively what that means is you need to demonstrate deception is necessary in experimental design for the experiment to actually work. If you are seeing whether a person will interact more with a site or not if they are blocked from seeing content without logging into an account, telling them ahead of time could already bias the outcome. This is in very specific consideration that #1 and #2 are already met: being unable to view a website without logging into an account is not anything more than minimal risk. And even then, it is important to emphasize that the failure to disclose the research hypothesis to counter the demand effect is NOT deception.

The kind of UI/UX A/B testing Reddit employed in this specific instance is absolutely not equivocal to the Asch conformity studies.

To be very clear here, when YOU operate under the belief that being unable to view the content of the website, then posting about it elsewhere and potentially being ridiculed for it is sufficient of a bar to meet beyond minimal risk, then we have very different definitions of what “minimal risk” entails. Since we cannot come to consensus on this particular topic, and instead you’ve gone so far as to associate this kind of activity’s harm of equivalent to the Asch conformity studies is frankly ludicrous.

If we cannot agree on this, then so be it. However, I will repeat (with added finality): YOU running the same A/B experiment Reddit is doing on an university-sanctioned website will NOT get you run out of the university by the IRB. In a real-world scenario. you would likely discuss this experiment with an administrator or similar at your department, then maybe send an e-mail off to the IRB for any clarification, would likely have some back-and-forth, and then would ultimately receive a determination that it is exempt (at worst), or not considered human subjects research at all. I can see a few circumstances where such an effort might merit an expedited review, but to do this would involve some torturous twisting of the situation that could be easily avoided (for example, running this testing on a page that has instructions for performing the Heimlich maneuver).

The Asch conformity study experiments are absolutely not equivalent to doing A/B testing on a wide scale with regards to how users interact with a website when presented with a pop-up preventing further interaction without logging in.

Edit: I would add that, with regards to “harm”, IRBs usually don’t contend themselves excessively with imaginative processes leading to catastrophic harm. Some kinds of harm are obvious (for example, disclosing that someone has a degenerative life disease discovered incidentally during clinical sequencing), and others are very much in the ballpark of “it could happen, but if you make reasonable accommodation it’s not a big deal”, such as being concerned that someone might risk choking to death while being a participant on a blind taste test of different beverages using tiny samples. Allergies are real and participants should be informed about these risks ahead of time; potentially choking on a small sip of Coke is good to note but is not going to register on even the participant’s radar. Could it happen? Maybe. Will the IRB demand you have a trained EMT nearby who can help such a participant? No.