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Comment by grest | Hacker News Reader

As a PhD student studying ape communication there is nothing more enticing then landing a spot on the Facebook data science team. I bet the best way for a current student to get a job there in the future would be to initiate an academic collaboration while still in the lab.

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Good luck getting 900 million people to fill out consent forms to satisfy your IRB. Academic research follows actual ethics rules. :)

Wouldn't the terms of service qualify? It explicitly gives Facebook permission to use your data.

Not for academic purposes they wouldn't, that doesn't really constitute informed consent. Most people don't read ToS and that is well known.

Am I the only one who sees most of my Friends on Facebook filling out junk information. I have two kids, a wife, and no sibling on Facebook, but in reality those are just acquaintances, I have lots of siblings, but no wife, nor kids. Most of the people I interact with on Facebook do something similar. Fake occupations, etc. etc.

We have a very different circle of acquaintances. I only know a few people that have fake information on FB out of a few hundred "friends." The most common I see is just a name change while applying to grad school. I see very few fake relationships, though I did see it more often in high school.

I remember on Myspace I had a lot of friends who were "99 years old". These sites are really about establishing a presence to sell artistic goods. The rest is kinda silly. Who has time to fill out Facebook like some sort of questionnaire? Its not the census, so their is no penalty for inaccurate information.

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