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This Week's Updates:
Congress Focuses on Social Media’s Role in Drug Trafficking
On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health heard from drug enforcement experts about the methods traffickers use to reach their customers – particularly young ones. In his testimony, DEA witness Jon C. DeLena stressed the significance of social media in the drug trafficking pipeline, pointing to the 129 cases that DEA investigated in 2021 which linked the sale of fake pills containing fentanyl to social media transactions. DeLena pointed out that the DEA is making efforts to educate the public through campaigns like “One Pill Can Kill,” but told the subcommittee members that social media companies themselves aren’t doing enough to protect young users.
While SnapChat’s temporary messages and location sharing features have been in the spotlight for enabling drug dealers, Instagram also has a “vanish mode” that allows messages to disappear after a period of time. In severaltests, CfA’s Tech Transparency Project found that Instagram failed to remove drug dealers from its platform, where they could easily be found by teen test users. As Congress examines the forces behind teen drug use and overdose deaths, the role of social media in drug trafficking cannot be overlooked.
Why Telehealth and Targeted Advertising Don’t Mix
GoodRX, a California-based telehealth service, promised its users that their personal health information wouldn’t be shared with third parties. Now, the company is in hot water with the FTC for illegally sending that information to ad platforms at companies like Google and Facebook. GoodRX wanted to show its users targeted ads for more medications and health care services based on the data they had already divulged – in doing so, the company violated a commitment made to their users and later failed to notify them of the unauthorized breach of their privacy. Now, the FTC has forced GoodRX to pay a civil penalty of $1.5 million and take steps to minimize, delete, and protect user data.
Algorithmic Bias at the IRS
According to a group of researchers at Stanford University, Black Americans are three to five times more likely to be audited than other taxpayers. While the IRS doesn’t collect data about race, its computer algorithms appear to have selected black families for audits at a much higher rate because of long-standing disparities in the agency’s audit system. Lacking the resources and personnel to audit high-income individuals with complex streams of income, the IRS has instead focused on Americans at the other end of the economic distribution. While the researchers identified the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as one possible “trigger” for audits, it explained only 14% of the disparity between Black and non-Black taxpayers. Closing this gap means boosting enforcement for high-income taxpayers, but the researchers also urged the IRS to reevaluate the design of its algorithms – especially because an analysis of previous audits revealed that more income underreporting could be attributed to non-Black Americans than Black ones.
What We're Reading:
How Google Manipulated Digital Ad Prices and Hurt Publishers, Per DOJ
Last week, the Department of Justice announced a much-anticipated lawsuit against Google for anticompetitive behavior surrounding its digital ads business. This piece provides a good breakdown of suit’s arguments.
FTC Prepares Possible Antitrust Suit Against Amazon
In more antitrust news, the Federal Trade Commission may be preparing to sue Amazon for potentially anticompetitive business practices. Should the suit move ahead, it could land as early as this spring.
