Kill Your Algorithm: Listen to the new podcast featuring tales from a more fearsome FTC

By Kate Kaye

Kill Your Algorithm is a two-part Digiday podcast special exploring the implications of a more aggressive Federal Trade Commission. Sometimes referred to as weak and toothless in past years, the FTC is sharpening its fangs under the tough new leadership of Chairwoman Lina Khan, who has already guided policy changes that could have a big impact on how the agency addresses privacy and antitrust abuses of data-hungry tech. But party-line votes among FTC commissioners signal heightened internal partisanship at the agency, known historically for rising above the political fray. And some worry getting too aggressive or political could backfire.

Episode One: Shocking Data Stories

When the FTC alleged that period tracking app maker Flo Health shared people’s private health information with Facebook and Google without permission, its settlement with the company required some changes in how it gathers and uses people’s data. But some believed it was just another example of a feeble approach to enforcing the agency’s authority. The settlement soon led to a controversial enforcement policy update that could affect countless health and fitness app makers. And that was just one indication that the FTC is getting tougher on tech firms. It’s already forced two companies to destroy their algorithms.

Transcript

Kill Your Algorithm credits:
Kate Kaye, reporter, scriptwriter and host
Sara Patterson, producer
Priya Rao, script editor
D. Rives Curtright, original music

PAM DIXON
For some people — for some women — this was a violation not just of privacy, but of spiritual beliefs, and religious beliefs. This was a huge problem for them and brought them great shame.

KATE KAYE
Pam Dixon is the executive director of World Privacy Forum, an organization that provides research and guidance related to all sorts of privacy issues.

When people found out that a period tracking app called Flo may have shared intimate data about their bodies without their permission, a lot of calls came into her group’s privacy hotline.

DIXON
When people of an app learn that their data is going to one of these large tech companies that they were not aware of when they signed up, it makes them very nervous and I think that’s fair. They’ll call our office line which is a voice line and takes a lot of messages.

KAYE
So, in case you don’t use one of these period trackers, they’ve become pretty common. Like many of the other period tracking apps, people use Flo to monitor their periods to see if they’re late, to know whether it’s prime time to try to get pregnant, to plan when the best dates for a beach vacation might be, or if they’re a little on the older side, to measure how their menstrual cycles change as menopause comes into the picture.

To make the app’s predictions work, people submit all sorts of really personal information about their bodies — when they were sexually intimate, whether they had sex related problems and even when they experienced premenstrual symptoms like bloating or acne or depression.

It was alleged that between …read more

Source:: Digiday