In the abstract yes, but it feels asymmetrical to me? Like, I don't hear people going "fun experiment, but to get accurate results you really need to get a random selection" for published research done on 18-22yo college kids; I feel like a lot of people really dismiss/belittle what I do (e.g. "fun experiment, but to get accurate results"), and for others, people frame it like "Interesting research! Of course we need to keep in mind the selection effects, but still let's now discuss the implications".

Maybe I'm overly sensitive right now, it feels like this annoyance has been building up in me for a while, it's not just from this one comment above. I think I perceive that people are being unfair/inconsistent in their standards, and that's generating the annoyance? For what it's worth I think I'm less likely than the average to perceive myself as receiving unfair treatment in general, as a baseline.

1. Research doesn't have to be free from self selection to be research
2. Surveys on websites are very often used as "research", and I've read through published papers that give about as much information as I did about my survey source. I was open about every step of how I did the survey to the point where you could recreate it exactly yourself (minus the likelihood ratio calculator, which I'm planning on publishing when I have time). My sample size was gigantic compared to most and I provided the raw data so you can double check everything I did yourself. I am not claiming that my research is perfectly generalizable. I also find most people who critique selection bias have a really poor understanding of exactly why selection bias is bad; they just see "internet survey, oh must be dumb". This frustrates me quite a lot. Maybe if I hid my process in formal wording in a passive voice and a high barrier-to-comprehension format people would criticize my methods less.
3. I really feel like I'm being held to an asymmetrical standard here. I'm down for stuff like "Hey, cool research, also I'd love to see a breakdown of how your demographics are different from the normal population". That would be great, I'd be happy with that. But I am pretty frustrated with the framing that what I'm doing is "not research." I know I don't know a lot, and I've gotten a lot of help from people online with suggestions on how to do things better, but I am really really tired of comments that treat what I'm doing like it's somehow fundamentally flawed and shouldn't be taken seriously.

if i had a nickel for every time i see this comment on my surveys but don't see this on almost all the other research out there