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Article History

Received: 25 July 2024

Accepted: 24 February 2025

First Online: 14 April 2025

Declarations

:

: The present study focused on an online community. Previous research has shown that it is impossible to ask for consent from every participant of an online community and that, even if it were possible to do so, the pseudonymous nature of internet communications, and the perceived safety which that brings, would be encroached upon, leading to distrust [, ]. For this reason, I followed previous recommendations to drop consent forms in favor of a less formal, more situation-sensitive approach [, ] as follows: (1) No data which could directly identify someone was collected. (2) I sought consent (through instant messaging) to carry out the study from the three Discord servers’ managers (Blue, Green and Yellow). (3) I chatted regularly about the study in the all three online communities, so that active members were aware I was conducting it. (4) I asked for consent from each person interviewed through private instant messaging; no consent form was used to preserve pseudonymity. (5) All field-based extracts (spelling, synonyms) were modified so that no information which might identify someone could be found via a search engine. (6) All pseudonyms were modified; different pseudonyms were used for the same use when he/she was a very active user to prevent any possibility of their being traced. (7) People who regularly appeared in my field extracts were asked to read the extracts in order to give their consent to their use. The Psychonaut.fr and Psychoactif.org forums were not pseudonymized for several reasons. First, no respondents were recruited from them, so the question of confidentiality was not an issue. Second, these two forums were established associations, giving them a legal existence under French harm reduction []. Finally, as both forums are self-hosted, the fear of censorship is not an issue (unlike Discord servers, which are the owned by the Discord company). Citing these forums in this article does not put anyone at risk. On the contrary, it recognizes their important role in the drug enthusiasts network, and their contribution to HR.

: Not applicable.

: The author declares that there is no competing interests.