✒️ FTC needs to keep working for the public good ⚠️ The woke-washing of product placement.
Exciting innovations, hype, and the disaster of eschewing precaution. US Coast Guard’s hearing on Oceangate is taking place.
The FTC under Lina Khan’s leadership is good for public safety and freedom from corporate authoritarianism.
Majority Report podcast had a segment about Lina Khan and the FTC, and more broadly about what’s at stake for public agencies and public safety regulations with regard to the upcoming elections as far as not just the president appointing agency heads and judges, but the senate majority needed to get them approved. And how corporations looking to avoid regulations bring lawsuits and then go venue shopping for pro-corporate judges and undermine the ability of regulators. (At the end of that segment they make the same points I make in my Letters to Reps guide, on how effective writing can be.) Revolving Door Project reports that they’re really going hard against the EPA in the Supreme Court shadow docket.
Note: Lina Khan can be kept on in an “acting” capacity even if her reappointment is not confirmed by the senate.
✏️Writing Prompt: My letters to reps:
Corporations looking to circumvent agency regulation decisions shouldn’t be able to go judge shopping in the judicial system looking for judges most likely to be corporate friendly. Stop the venue shopping.
I also recommend writing to VP Harris in support of Lina Khan remaining the chair of the FTC because the FTC has been doing good things now for consumer issues, such as going after monopolies and the authoritarian rule of corporate monopolies, and (as I’ve mentioned before), they’re going to start penalizing “fake and false consumer reviews and testimonials” which has become a substantial problem.
FTC (Federal Trade Commission) We’ll pay you to give our new rule a good review - By Michael Atleson August 14, 2024 As the Commission noted previously, case-by-case enforcement without civil penalty authority might not be enough to deter clearly deceptive review and testimonial practices. The Supreme Court’s decision in AMG Capital Management LLC v. FTC has hindered the FTC’s ability to seek monetary relief for consumers under the FTC Act. This rule will enhance deterrence and strengthen FTC enforcement actions.
✏️Writing Prompt: My letter to VP Harris and my U.S. Senators: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/vicepresident/
I want to see Lina Khan stay as chair of the FTC. I approve and support the regulation of authoritarian corporate monopolies, and I am relieved that inauthentic product testimonials will be penalized.
✏️Writing Prompt: My letter to federal and state reps:
I’m tired of wading through fake reviews and inauthentic testimonials for products and services polluting every online space. It happens not just in shopping websites, but also in message boards, forums, and even sometimes in private social groups where admins allow it for financial compensation, sometimes without disclosing that. It needs to be curtailed and disclosure of conflicts of interest should be mandatory.
Fake testimonials are a thing. People post these recommendations with natural sounding language on forums and social media so it doesn’t sound like ad copy or look like an advertisement, but it is. They can go into a forum and seemingly innocently ask a question, and then nonchalantly bring up their “personal experience” with a product, as a way of circumventing moderators who of course want to keep unpaid ads out of their spaces and rules against that. In the U.S. influencers and bloggers who do this are supposed to disclose payments, but sometimes don’t. Sometimes vendors mislead with fraudulent testimonials on their website by using quotes from quotes related to the technology from scientists on social media, and then pass them off as testimonials for a related product that the scientists never actually endorsed, and may not even know their name is on the vendor website. I call that fraudulent testimonial misrepresentation and it stinks.
Please feel free to repurpose for your own letters to reps.
The woke-washing of product placement.
I’ve heard stories about vendors and people advertising products in social and support groups and forums using woke-washing to try to bully people into promoting products. If someone is telling people it’s “harming community” to choose not to promote some product, it might be woke-washing. It really doesn’t even matter if the products are sketchy or if they’re ordinary useful products. Support groups and advocacy organizations that are legitimate should not involve guilt-trips or high pressure sales tactics, especially not around selling products. I’ve also heard stories about group admins who oust anyone who complains about the practices of vendor marketing within the group. If this is happening in a “community” or group you’re in, you might actually be dealing with an MLM or something like that. At any rate, nobody should have to put up with groups that exist primarily to sell member eyeballs to vendors and marketers. It’s hard to avoid sketchy stuff on the internet, but we all deserve spaces where people don’t play fast and loose with people's information, and that are not constantly rocked by risky shift.
It’s okay to say no thanks to product cults.
🗞️ In the news
RSV Vaccines Show High Effectiveness Against Hospitalization in Older Adults — Initial trials were not powered to assess efficacy against RSV-associated hospitalization by Jennifer Henderson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today September 4, 2024 During the first season of use, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccination among older adults was associated with a substantially reduced risk of hospitalization, a test-negative, case-control study indicated.
The Bergen Record NJ Republican governor candidate introduces bill to outlaw wearing masks in public Katie Sobko, NorthJersey.com Thu, September 12, 2024 at 6:14 PM EDT The bill would make it a petty disorderly persons offense for people to congregate in public while wearing masks or obscuring their faces in some way to conceal their identity.
Irish Independent - Tess Finch-Lees: If parents don’t fight to protect children from Covid in schools, nobody else will - Wed 4 Sep 2024 at 21:30 When masks were dropped in the “Omicron’s mild” phase of the pandemic, Cara continued as the lone masker at school to protect her immunocompromised mother, who was undergoing chemotherapy. It was tolerable until a child psychotherapist said on the national airwaves that some girls would continue to mask anyway “to hide their acne”. His words were used to bully her. Cara left, but without support from teachers she struggled. Her parents pleaded with the school to use the Hepa filter they bought. The school refused. Cara eventually returned to school unmasked, caught Covid and infected her mam. It killed her. Cara self-harms because she blames herself. She hasn’t been to school since. Research shows that more than 70pc of Sars-CoV-2 transmission in households started with a child. The incidence was highest during unmitigated in-person schooling. In a recent paper, Dr Pantea Javidan, of Stanford’s Centre for Human Rights, described the ways children’s rights to life, health and safety during the ongoing pandemic have been falsely rendered oppositional to education and development. Methods used to manufacture consent to forcibly, repeatedly infect children, according to Dr Javidan, include minimising harms to children (“kids don’t get it or spread it”, “it’s mild”) and moral panic around mental health and educational attainment.
AP - Fourth death linked to Legionnaires’ disease cluster at New York assisted living facility - September 10, 2024 Albany County Department of Health Commissioner Maribeth Miller said in a prepared statement Tuesday that there were two new positive tests for legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, and now a total of four deaths connected to the outbreak. Legionnaires’ disease is a severe type of pneumonia caused by inhaling small water droplets containing Legionella bacteria, which can lurk inside plumbing systems. People who are older, have weakened immune systems or have certain medical conditions like chronic lung disease are at higher risk for developing Legionnaires’ disease.
MedPage Today - Is 'Wellness' Bad News for Healthcare? — The growing industry is a double-edged sword by Andrea Love, PhD, and Katie Suleta, DHSc, MPH, MS September 2, 2024 Today, FDA-approved tests are available over the counter for HIV, chlamydia, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), and more. Now, there's an app for prescriptions for contraception and antidepressants, which previously required in-office appointments. Medical advice can now be provided via telehealth, allowing providers to see more patients with limited resources. Technology has improved the ability to manage certain conditions with convenience. Unfortunately, pseudoscience rides the coattails of some of that technology. The $5.6 trillion global wellness industry also responds to patient complaints and desires. While the wellness industry has brought attention to the multi-dimensionality of health and well-being, it has a more nefarious side too. Wellness companies use the same strategies as evidence-based medicine to sell tests for diseases that don't exist and treatments that don't work, recommended by individuals who aren't qualified.
Exciting innovations, hype, and the disaster of eschewing precautions.
US Coast Guard’s hearing on Oceangate is taking place..
One witness, former OceanGate engineering director Tony Nissen, said that when he joined in 2016 the company had already built a model of the Titan submersible at a third of the size. He said he had witnessed models implode in testing and saw a “rapid decompression” although claimed he didn’t know much about it “except there were two others they tested before”. “It wasn’t surprised that it failed where it did,” he said. Upon being asked if the design was changed to rectify the problem he said that Brian Spencer, the chief executive of Spencer Composites, which had been contracted to make the hull for the submersible, was “not willing to change anything that he did”.
I still feel that this story is part of a genre and applicable to a lot of things - an example of elite panic and how there’s a class of people who just doesn’t see risk to even themselves, but especially the rest of us, as a priority. But I painfully watch even people who would look at Stockton Rush and say obviously he was wrong to mock safety precautions as “pure waste”, and recognize that assertions that covid is mild is some kind of PR manufacturing bullshit, but then eagerly rush to buy and or promote a product that even the experts in the field say is not proven safe.
JD Vance spreads urban legends.
JD Vance is has now repeated the racist urban legend that immigrants spread diseases. This is based on stigma around people considered “outsiders” and infectious diseases in general.
It’s important to reject this framing of healthcare issues, even for practical reasons — because it clouds judgement. The whole pandemic I’ve heard of people assuming they won’t get covid from their family gathering — only seemingly believing they are at risk if they are among strangers in public. Pretty sure this is a system 1 error cognitive bias where people aren’t thinking things through.
Humans get communicable diseases when we are exposed.
Quote:
“Somewhat unexpectedly, susceptibility to type I error cognitive biases predisposed people to engage in any type of preventive behavior, whether evidence-based or pseudoscientific.”
Teovanović P, Lukić P, Zupan Z, Lazić A, Ninković M, Žeželj I. Irrational beliefs differentially predict adherence to guidelines and pseudoscientific practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Appl Cogn Psychol. 2021 Mar-Apr;35(2):486-496. doi: 10.1002/acp.3770. Epub 2020 Dec 7. PMID: 33362344; PMCID: PMC7753549. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7753549/