The FDA Wants To Dig Through Everyone's Stuff In Order To 'Monitor Online Sentiment'
from the a-tough-sell-in-the-current-anti-surveillance-climate dept
The FDA would like to know what you're thinking. It doesn't want to read minds and it couldn't care less about your lesser, non-FDA-related thoughts. That stuff's for other agencies with even creepier intentions and more nefarious toolsets. No, the FDA wants to know what you, the public, think about the FDA. And by "think," it means post stuff on the internet. And by "stuff," it means damn near everything.
Regulatory Focus (via the Pharma Marketing Blog) reports that the FDA is seeking bids from contractors in order to provide the agency with assistance in "monitoring online sentiment."
It is similar in many respects to an earlier contract awarded to help the agency monitor social media traffic. That contract was subject to a considerable amount of scrutiny by some legislators, including Republican Tom Coburn (R-OK), who included the project in his influential yearly "Wastebook" (#87) of allegedly superfluous taxpayer-funded projects.This new push for an online sentiment tracker does seem more than a little needy and/or narcissistic. Sure, even federal agencies need to do a little PR work from time to time, but the regulatory agency's focus should be regulating, not scanning the web for "influencers" in order to slightly better target its talking points and drug interaction updates.
"Being liked is important, but maybe federal agencies should take some time away from figuring out what people think about them and spend more time just doing their job," Coburn's report quipped.
This would just seem like a bit of the old "B.M.F. (US Gov. Remix)" if the FDA wasn't looking to cast an FDA-centric dragnet across the internet in order to achieve its goal of… well… being liked? Here's a truncated list of everywhere and everything the FDA wants to "monitor" for "sentiment."
Must draw from multiple social media channels, including (but not limited to): blogs, forums, Twitter, social networking, etc.The contractor providing this glorious bounty of harvested data and content is given the option of doing the work onsite at the FDA or on its own premises and must be able to create a robust program that is easy, accessible, powerful and deeply technical. Said contractor must also be able to discern the meaning of the following word salad without mocking the agency or consulting a third-party interpreter.
Must draw from mainstream media sources
Must draw from photos, audio and video sources
Must draw from open source data sets, including, e-commerce sites Amazon, drugstore.com, etc.),
Must draw from proprietary data sets
Must allow for network, nodal analyses of communications channels, influencers, propagators, etc.
Gain access to the message impact to the geographic area, determine influencers and create analytics to better target the outreach of public health messages to various audiencesOh, and presumably the software needs to come in under budget, or at least not so far over it that Sen. Coburn adds FDA Online Sentiment Monitor And Message Impacter (v. 1.3b) to the 2015 edition of Wastebook.
So, as Coburn sort of asked, why should the FDA care what the public is thinking (or at least spreading all over the internet), or why should it care so much that it's willing to task a contractor with sifting through nearly everything that can be publicly posted in order to make small adjustments to its PR efforts? Is it really worthwhile to chase down something this nebulous? The FDA obviously believes it is. This is its second attempt to turn social media into a set of massageable numbers.
But what about privacy concerns? Nothing in the bid document mentions anything about that. Of course, the government assumes that if people are willing to post things publicly then they're willing to share it with federal agencies as well. There's no expectation of privacy to prevent a private contractor from rooting through videos, photos, blog posts, podcasts and other shared content in hopes of quantifying online feels vis-a-vis the FDA.
But a smart agency would take into consideration the potential impact of its data/content trawling, first and foremost in terms of public image, because that area -- the same one it's trying to improve -- is the one that will take the most damage when people witness yet another agency rooting around in their stuff. (Yes, they share stuff and they still consider it "theirs." It's weird but that's how humans feel about personal content, even if shared publicly.) Just because you can do it with no legal repercussions doesn't mean you should do it, especially in pursuit of vagaries like "online sentiment."
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Filed Under: consumer sentiment, fda, online sentiment
Reader Comments
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I think the FDA is completely bought
Also, they don't really care 2 beans about public safety, preferring instead the budget safety of big pharma.
They're probably THE most corrupt branch of the federal government, and that's saying a lot.
How's that?
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Re: I think the FDA is completely bought
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Hardly seems cost effective
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Instead of actually trying to communicate they want someone to dig up all the data for them.
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Re: FDA Wants to Dig Through Stuff.......
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And YET you're not worried about Google. Astounding disconnect.
When you think surveillance or spying or snooping or censoring or pushing propaganda, think Google!
Google wants you to know you're under our ever improving state-of-the-art personalized surveillance! We learn your interests, habits, and associations! All "free", courtesy of other corporations!
10:42:47[l-765-2]
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Re: And YET you're not worried about Google. Astounding disconnect.
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Fuck the FDA
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FDA Assessing the Results of Their Spin
But like all companies, politicians and patricians today, the FDA sees such ugly little details of reality to be irrelevant: What matters to them is their image, as created by their Image Whitewashing Department (usually known as "Media Relations").
They just want to see if the department is earning its pay.
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I'm not sure this is a problem
When I post criticism about the FDA, the FDA is at the top of the list of who I'd want to read it.
That's how public media works. I have an clear expectation that anything I post publicly can be scraped and compiled into a database, at any time.
Saying the FDA shouldn't have it is even dumber than saying Gov employees can't read classified stuff after it's been leaked online.
Now if the FDA were buying my browsing history from my ISP, or copying my email from my provider, I'd be seriously cheesed because I didn't overtly consent to it.
But that isn't the case. The FDA wants info that I put out there for everyone.
Besides. it may be the only time my Gov actually cares about something I say.
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Re: I'm not sure this is a problem
The conditional information, however, I guard jealously.
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Re: I'm not sure this is a problem
But, of course, it seems like a total waste to subcontract this. If you're going to monitor sentiment - which is not a bad thing to do - you should really do it yourself. Giving someone else the job of telling you what people think of you seems like a recipe for disaster.
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Re: Re: I'm not sure this is a problem
They already know what is being said about them, they want to know who is saying it and the demographics. Hmm, that makes me wonder..
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Awesome.
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Re:
Can anybody say "Pork?" 'Cause I heard something going "Oink."
This is our money and we need to hold them accountable for how they spend it. Call your congresscritters, people, and get them to work for their wages! This shall not stand.
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The fact is the pharma industry hasn't the first foggy notion of how or why most drugs operate, and worse, what possible side effects they present. Heck, they don't even know how or why Willow Bark extract (aspirin) works. In me, two aspirin will kill a category 5 toothache. My wife can eat the whole bottle with almost no effect. Do they know why? Not a clue!
We've been used as a mobile, free, testing service almost forever (kinda like software). If the problems get too big, or get too much press (remember Thalidomide?), the "drug" disappears, and maybe someone gets paid off - OOPs.
This should all be proven BEFORE the drug gets approved, but, you know, PROFIT! Besides, following all those laws and regulations is time consuming and, most important, EXPENSIVE. Can't have that, now can we? So, they buy the approval agency. Simple!
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Re: That's what the law already says
The manufacturer is supposed to document the design, manufacture and installation of the process that creates the product. They are also supposed to document operations.
Specifically, the documentation shall be sufficient by itself, with no other help, to recreate the manufacturing process that makes the product. Results must be reproducible and identical between original and duplicate systems.
Somehow they have forgotten that. Now, they are not the only ones with their fingers in the cookie jar. Congress has exempted certain products (COUGH GMOs COUGH) from going through the entire validation process.
But, if the FDA had bothered to ask, I would have been glad to tell them, "You have corrupted your mission and are now working against your original charter! We need another Upton Sinclair to get people riled enough to want to do something about the state of the food production systems."
The sad part is that the FDA actually DOES enforce their regs sometimes. They have taken over QA activities from several pharmaceutical manufacturers. And we still have a problem. That should tell you how big a problem we have.
Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of interest in the US public for getting riled about anything but pro sports and movie stars.
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Re:
The FDA actually refused to approve Thalidomide, so I'm not sure what your point here is.
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Toss up
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Then they would need to pay serious attention to the fucking results - and also get used to the 'F' word. They are likely see all of its variants quite frequently!
Of course that might result in some really useful public/consumer feedback, and data points on real perceived/actual FDA performance. Such data could be evaluated and analysed, to to get a first hand view of their perceived performance from the people who actually fund the FDA existence (though their taxes), as opposed to the corporations that fund their extra's and perks.
That, of course, assumes they really want something more than a high priced, convenient, spray of reputation colored, 'social-based camouflage paint'!
Lots of (dis)-Reputation Management scum around to contract for that.
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Patient Privacy blocks drug side effect data
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Yeah yeah, you're just depressed and your depression is the cause of your cynicism. Buy this FDA approved drug and you'll be all better and thinking positively about the world.
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Because they have nothing better to do?
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Why use a contractor?
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FFT
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It isn't about measuring sentiment, it is about controlling it
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Why not the FDA as well?
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Food & Drug Admin
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FDA SUCKS MONKEY BALLS
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FDA??
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