Digital Dystopia: What Happened in March 2023?
Think of me as your tour guide to digital dystopia. Here’s a roundup of what happened in March.
The biggest news in psychology and digital privacy in March is that the FTC reached a nearly $8 billion settlement with BetterHelp, the online therapy service. BetterHelp was allegedly sharing private mental health data with third parties, like Facebook, for advertising purposes. It highlights important issues about how our most sensitive data — data we reasonably think should be legally protected — often makes it into the hands of companies we don’t know about. And they, in turn, use it to extract profits from us, often on our most vulnerable points.
I wrote over on Psychology Today about a group of Catholics in Colorado using location data to out gay priests who used apps like Grindr. This echoes other use of marketing location data being used for social persecution, including in abortion (which I also talk about in that article).
Utah has a new law that requires parental permission for children to use social media for anyone under the age of 18 and that prevents kids from using social media between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. Good luck with that, Utah.
Billie Eilish says she has deleted all her social media apps for her mental health. I admire this and, while I don’t think I could do it — personally or professional ly— I bet it will make her much happier.
The AP and US Department of Justice are investigating AI tools used to determine if children are at risk with their parents. These tools seem to have bias that discriminates against disabled adults, and the linked story shares the heartbreaking tale of a 7-month-old taken from her parents into foster care after her parents took her to the hospital when she refused to eat. The parents, who are disabled, wonder if the AI was partly responsible for that decision (h/t to my colleague Amelia Gibson, who brought this article to my attention).
ZDNET has a great piece on why you should switch from Chrome to Firefox to protect your privacy when you’re on the web. Firefox, by default, offers “Total Cookie Protection” which stops you from being tracked across sites.
ChatGPT, the text-generation tool that’s at the front of people’s minds these days, has been blocked in Italy over privacy concerns. ChatGPT is artificial intelligence that learns to put words together by reading things other people have written and replicating that. The problem is that no one was asked if it was OK to use their text to train ChatGPT, and this may run afoul of strict privacy laws in Europe.
Back in the US, the FTC is investigating Twitter for their privacy practices. Twitter is under a consent decree as a result of their past poor privacy and security practices. Since Elon Musk took over, he has fired vast numbers of employees, including from the privacy and security teams. The FTC wants to know if Twitter is still upholding the strong protections they are required to have under the decree.
