Cyndyh beat me to the punch. And please don’t yell at me for being too serious, this is how my mind works:
No, someone could not “be using” Fluther as a thesis or research project because in the U.S. all Federally funded studies (which basically means all studies because public and private universities both receive Federal funds) must be approved by an ethical review board, which protects the rights of the participants, so we would all have given our informed consent (that we know what kind of research is being done, what the risk and/or benefits might be, and that we’re okay with it), and signed waivers to that effect. Since I have not signed a waiver to that effect, I know that no federally funded research is being done on me on fluther.
This is not to say that someone couldn’t do it, they would just have to jump through a lot of hoops, or that they couldn’t be “collecting research” right now that was for their own person use, and not publicly funded or that would have a snowflake’s chance in hell of being published.