Metagov believes in and is committed to the value of public spaces. In particular, the Metagov Slack is a semi-public space that is maintained by the Metagovernance Project (a private nonprofit) for the public benefit, including but not limited to the community of researchers and practitioners that participate in the Metagov Slack. As part of this commitment, our policy regarding participation in the public channels of our Slack is to treat such participation as akin to participation in a public park or in a public platform such as Mastodon.

This means that links and discussions in public Slack channels may be

• included and/or summarized in our public newsletter

• be used by third-party bots installed in the Slack, including governance bots built by Metagov researchers such as PolicyKit, as well as other third-party software services

• be used by Slack, under Slack’s own terms and conditions

• exported using the Slack export function and published in a public manner within a storage solution such as GitHub

Data processing

As part of operating a service such as a Slack community, we need to process and deliver messages and other data that you send to Slack. In particular, a key component of participating in Metagov is installing and testing bots and other automations that deliver services to the community, and such bots and automations almost always need to consume and process Slack data in order to function.

Note that data processing does not require giving up copyright over your data and messages. This use of the data is largely governed by Slack’s terms of service.

Data publishing

Separate from data processing, Metagov exports and publishes certain Slack data from our public channels so that this data can be used by researchers for research purposes under typical fair use laws or by community members that would like to retain their (public) conversations but no longer wish to participate in the Slack. We do not attach or warrant any licenses for any content in the published data; it is up to the consumers of that data to decide what constitutes fair use.

Our model for this data publishing policy is public, open, and interoperable platforms such as Mastodon, though we have tailored it to the needs and norms of our research community. Individual research projects that wish to interact with other elements of Metagov will still need to consult their own ethics committees.

Opting out as a member

Traditional public spaces often do not allow “opt-out” because it is infeasible (imagine trying to give an opt-out form to every person in a busy traffic intersection!). In certain digital environments, opt-out is easier to implement.

For those who wish to opt-out of Slack data exports, we have translated to Slack the red “no-photo” buttons common in conferences. In this case, please add a red circle emoji, 🔴, to your Slack title (not your Slack name), and we will do our best to remove all messages and replies from you in the data export. We cannot always remove “quote replies” where other people quote your messages.

Opting out as a channel

By default, we will publish data in all public channels. Community members can also create semi-private channels, or “seminar rooms”, by copy and pasting the following into the channel description: “🔴 - this channel is open to anyone, but conversations here cannot be referenced outside of the channel in newsletters or data exports without explicit prior permission.”

These channel opt-outs SHOULD be implemented during the creation of the channel, otherwise the data export may capture a portion of the channel’s data. Once set for a channel, the opt-out status SHOULD NOT be changed.

Opting in as a channel

Channels cannot currently override individual opt-out. While doing so may improve data quality in certain channels, we do not think that most channels have enough governance capacity to merit this kind of affordance. Instead, we recommend two workarounds: setting up an automation to ban individuals wearing red badges OR pasting the following into the channel description: “🟢 - conversations in this channel are intended to be public, referenced in public media or research publications, and included in data sets and data exports. Please do not participate if you have an issue with this.” We may revisit this policy in the future.

Transitional provisions

Upon passing of this policy by the board of directors of Metagov, we will implement (1) two public announcements in the Slack explaining the policy and opt-out mechanisms, (2) a one-week period of public consultation for this policy, and (3) implementation of public notice of the policy on our website and Slack. This policy will be considered ratified and in effect only after the completion of the steps above.

This policy should be regarded as provisional. After passing this policy, the board will revisit it after additional testing, in particular after the first implementation of an application or research project that uses the data publishing policy. We reserve the right to remove already-published data after the results of testing the policy and/or public consultation.