@inproceedings{hartmann-etal-2026-bye,
title = "Bye Bye Perspective {API}: Lessons for Building and Governing Measurement Infrastructure",
author = "Hartmann, David and
Tonneau, Manuel and
Kraft, Angelie and
Seiling, LK and
Staufer, Dimitri and
Delobelle, Pieter and
Fillies, Jan and
Luther, Anna Ricarda and
Batzner, Jan and
Lisker, Mareike",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2458/",
pages = "52890--52914",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Perspective API closes at the end of 2026, removing the de facto standard for toxicity measurement and exposing researchers' dependence on a tool they did not control. Drawing on this case, we argue that a research field must build and govern its own measurement infrastructure rather than borrow it. Surveying 241 papers that use or study Perspective, we show what depending on it cost the research community: claims reaching past what the tool could support, results that shifted when its model was silently retrained, and disparities researchers could measure but not explain. These failures were amplified throughout the LLM lifecycle, where Perspective supplied the labels, filtered the corpora, and graded the systems trained on each, rewarding errors rather than catching them. To keep the instrument open to study after shutdown, we release Perspective scores for 5.9 million text snippets from 77 datasets. We further specify ten requirements for measurement infrastructure a field owns, and argue that what blocks such infrastructure is not technical capability but the value the field places on infrastructure work."
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Bye Bye Perspective API: Lessons for Building and Governing Measurement Infrastructure
%A Hartmann, David
%A Tonneau, Manuel
%A Kraft, Angelie
%A Seiling, L. K.
%A Staufer, Dimitri
%A Delobelle, Pieter
%A Fillies, Jan
%A Luther, Anna Ricarda
%A Batzner, Jan
%A Lisker, Mareike
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F hartmann-etal-2026-bye
%X Perspective API closes at the end of 2026, removing the de facto standard for toxicity measurement and exposing researchers’ dependence on a tool they did not control. Drawing on this case, we argue that a research field must build and govern its own measurement infrastructure rather than borrow it. Surveying 241 papers that use or study Perspective, we show what depending on it cost the research community: claims reaching past what the tool could support, results that shifted when its model was silently retrained, and disparities researchers could measure but not explain. These failures were amplified throughout the LLM lifecycle, where Perspective supplied the labels, filtered the corpora, and graded the systems trained on each, rewarding errors rather than catching them. To keep the instrument open to study after shutdown, we release Perspective scores for 5.9 million text snippets from 77 datasets. We further specify ten requirements for measurement infrastructure a field owns, and argue that what blocks such infrastructure is not technical capability but the value the field places on infrastructure work.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2458/
%P 52890-52914
Markdown (Informal)
[Bye Bye Perspective API: Lessons for Building and Governing Measurement Infrastructure](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2458/) (Hartmann et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- David Hartmann, Manuel Tonneau, Angelie Kraft, LK Seiling, Dimitri Staufer, Pieter Delobelle, Jan Fillies, Anna Ricarda Luther, Jan Batzner, and Mareike Lisker. 2026. Bye Bye Perspective API: Lessons for Building and Governing Measurement Infrastructure. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 52890–52914, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.