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This Week's Updates:
TTP Reveals that Meta is Still Approving Advertisements for Firearms
On Monday, CfA’s Tech Transparency Project published a report identifying over 230 advertisements for guns, gun accessories, or ammunition that had been approved by Meta’s automatic screening systems, in violation of its own advertising guidelines. Several of the ads or associated Telegram channels claimed to be selling untraceable ghost guns, and even offered free or worldwide shipping.
Americans have used Meta platforms to sell guns for over a decade, though the company pledged to stop allowing private firearms sales in 2016. TTP first drew attention to this problem in 2022, with a report that flagged 173 firearm advertisements approved by Meta. A Meta spokesperson told NBC that TTP’s research was “misleading,” because “most” users do not see advertisements for weapons.
Regardless of what “most” users experience, Meta’s lack of quality control has clearly allowed bad actors to take advantage of its platforms. In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors were investigating the company for facilitating and profiting from drug sales. Unlike lawsuits regarding scam advertisements, which the company dodged using Section 230, these law enforcement investigations may eventually force Meta to clean up its act – or maybe even hire human workers to monitor the systems that generate its revenue.
TTP’s report was a collaboration with Everytown for Gun Safety, who issued a set of recommendations around the findings to Meta for making its platform safer from illicit gun sales.
Anti-Abortion Academics Sue Journal for Retracting Flawed Research
Last week, a group of anti-abortion researchers filed a lawsuit against Sage Publications, arguing that the academic publisher caused “enormous and incalculable” harm to their reputations by retracting three articlesthey had authored on abortion complications, the use of mifepristone, and the characteristics of doctors who perform abortions. The last article, which referred to care providers as “abortionists,” used data provided by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration to attack physicians’ qualifications. In the article’s discission session, the authors write that the “relatively advanced age distribution and large percentage of abortionists with some malpractice claim, disciplinary action, public complaint, or criminal charge suggest that these doctors may be a subset of practicing physicians for whom abortion practice may be a final professional expedient [emphasis added].” This analysis completely ignores the fact that abortion providers are frequently harassed by anti-abortion activists and targeted with groundless complaints.
All but one of authors were also affiliated with anti-abortion advocacy organizations, which none of them chose to disclose in their conflict-of-interest statements. You can read more the retraction of the medication abortion research in Scientific American.
Tennessee Attorney General Asks Court to Uphold Gender Affirming Care Ban for Youth, Citing Dobbs
This week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a Supreme Court brief defending the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, citing the Court’s Dobbs decision to argue that the ban is an “even-handed ‘regulation of a medication procedure,’” rather than a form of discrimination. The ban was signed into law in March 2023, and prohibits physicians from providing any treatment to minors that enables them to “identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex.” In 2024, Tennessee’s legislature went further by criminalizing the act of helping a minor access gender affirming care without a parent’s consent. Some families have already fled the state to allow their children to begin receiving treatment, while others embark on regular road trips to states where they can meet with doctors and fill prescriptions. In June, the Supreme Court announced that it would consider a challenge of the ban, which was brought by the ACLU.
