By: Ben Brody and Hirsh Chitkara
Despite its relative silence on the most contentious issue in American politics, the social media industry has finally revealed it can be pushed by Democrats in power to do more to protect people seeking abortions. Now the question is what else lawmakers, state attorneys general and others should ask for.
After the Supreme Court cleared the way for states to criminalize abortion, much of the popular conversation revolved around what users could do to protect their data, and whether tech companies could suddenly start ignoring valid legal demands.
- Honestly, neither seems like a great way to reach the majority of the population, and the latter is no way to do long-term business in society based on the rule of law.
- Companies did say they’d pay for employees’ health care travel, and Google said it would start automatically deleting location history related to sensitive places like abortion clinics.
- But mostly, in part because they will face massive political pressure over any decisions, social media companies seemed to be dragging their feet and keeping mum about addressing how their business models create risks for people seeking abortion care.
Quietly, though, in recent weeks, the companies have allowed themselves to be lobbied, a little, by Democrats — and they’ve ignored some threats from Republicans.
- Google, for instance, recently told Democratic lawmakers, who’d cajoled the company, that it will only present accurate information about whether health care providers perform abortions when users search for such services, following a similar move by rival Yelp.
- Presenting accurate information would come at the expense of results listing “crisis” centers, which delay and divert people away from terminating their pregnancies — even though a group of Republican attorneys general recently threatened Sundar Pichai to come down on his company if it downplayed the facilities by pointing out what they actually do and don’t do.
- And Meta has broadened testing of encrypted chats on Messenger (but totally not in response to that Nebraska teen whose messages were accessed by law enforcement before she faced abortion charges).
- Oracle and other data brokers also at least felt compelled to answer Democratic House lawmakers, and Rep. Lori Trahan, who led the letter, is now demanding answers on metadata from tech platforms, telecoms and Apple.
What social media and communications tech companies need to do is not new, as Corynne McSherry, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal director, told me.
- First of all, companies shouldn’t collect or keep data about abortion, McSherry wrote in a recent blog post. Seriously. Yes, Google says it’ll auto-delete such information, but it’s still picking up the info, and Meta and others haven’t followed the example.
- McSherry also wrote about the importance of encryption and opt-in consent for tracking.
And yes, even if they have to comply with valid warrants, companies should also start making reforms around how they handle law enforcement demands for information related to abortion information, McSherry and others have said.
- “Scrutinizing the legal process they’ve received to make sure it meets all legal requirements,” including that it’s not overbroad, is key, said Samir Jain, director of policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology.
- Companies should also alert users about the demands when they can so that the latter have the option of stepping in.
- Though focused on content, not data, Google again took the first steps when it said it would limit falsehoods about the safety of abortion and the promotion of unproven or unsafe methods of terminating pregnancies.
- Jain suggested platforms need to do more here, and that they already learned a lot of lessons from policing COVID-19 misinformation that would be useful.
Tech companies aren’t going to do everything Democratic lawmakers ask, and the business models of Google and Meta mean that even if there’s someday a comprehensive privacy law, they will never stop being hungry for our data. They’re going to face swift pushback from the GOP too. But if Democrats want to take advantage of the realization they may actually hold on to some power next year, there’s a lot they may want to remind Big Tech that they still care about.
