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This Week's Updates:
How Federal Funding Keeps Flowing to Anti-Abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers
Earlier this month, an in-depth investigation by Nebraska’s Flatwater Free Press revealed that State Auditor Mike Foley had maintained a close relationship with a network of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), advising them on their spending and even rewriting grant requests. Freedom of information requests filed by the Press revealed that Foley helped the CPCs meet spending requirements for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding; if the federal government threatened to claw the money back, he said, Nebraska could pay the bill using unspent TANF dollars, “of which we have plenty.” Indeed, Nebraska’s unusually low TANF eligibility cutoff has led to fewer and fewer families qualifying for the program, allowing the state to develop a $131 million reserve. Nebraska CPCs, meanwhile, received $2.8 million in TANF funds between August 2021 and January 2024.
In 2022, the Nebraska ACLU published a report on the state’s CPCs, which outnumber Nebraska abortion providers eight-to-one. The report noted that CPCs are not bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), meaning they have no obligation to protect patient privacy. In April, CfA sent complaints to the attorneys general of Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington alleging that CPCs in their states had potentially violated consumer protection laws by telling clients their personal health information was protected under HIPAA.
On Monday, CfA’s complaints were cited in a new article by Jenifer McKenna, a reproductive rights advocate and the co-founder of the California Women’s Law Center. “[Unregulated pregnancy clinics] operate under no legal requirement to protect client confidentiality and no regulatory authority that would govern their handling of client data,” McKenna writes. That information could later be used against patients in abortion-related investigations, if the clinics chose to share it with law enforcement.
Lawmakers Press Mark Zuckerberg on Illegal Drug Advertisements Identified by TTP
Last month, CfA’s Tech Transparency Project (TTP) published a report revealing that Meta had screened and approved hundreds of advertisements for dangerous drugs, demonstrating a systemic failure to protect users and enforce its own policies. Now, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has cited TTP’s research in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, noting that his company appears to have “shirk[ed] its social responsibility” despite repeated promises to do better. The letter also condemns Meta for monetizing and amplifying this content, rather than simply allowing users to post it, and asks Zuckerberg to reveal how much money his company has made from illegal drug advertisements.
The morning the letter was published, TTP identified additional drug advertisements in Meta’s Ad Library, including ones for cocaine and MDMA. Just this week, Meta appears to have shown an advertisement for a powdered substance to 25,000 users in the EU, where it is forced to be more transparent about its operations. The letter was covered by CNBC and Engadget, both of which received a two-week-old statement from Meta that had previously been shared with The Wall Street Journal. The Journal published a follow-up report last night, with details about the letter and Meta’s other content moderation failures.
New “Broken Promises” Initiative Cites TTP Research, While EU Pushes for Answers
This week, Issue One released an updated database to track Big Tech’s broken promises on user wellbeing and public safety, drawing on earlier research published by TTP and a number of other tech watchdog organizations. The launch of the database coincides with the death of CrowdTangle, a monitoring tool for Meta platforms that allowed researchers to track viral disinformation and calls for violence. Now, researchers must rely on the more limited “Meta Content Library,” which will likely hinder ongoing studies and make it harder for independent experts to hold Meta accountable. Journalists at for-profit newsrooms will also be unable to access the library, even though they were allowed access to CrowdTangle.
Meta also refused a request from a bipartisan coalition of US Senators, who asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to extend support for CrowdTangle through the 2024 elections. In the EU, though, large platforms like Meta’s Instagram and Facebook are held to a higher standard; today, the European Commission asked Meta to confirm that its Content Library is compliant with the data-sharing requirements of the Digital Services Act, expressing concern about its limitations. A Meta spokesperson told Euro News that the company’s content library is “more comprehensive” than CrowdTangle, and that its staff “remained in discussion” with the Commission.
