Accountable Tech led a coalition of civil society organizations in a letter to tech executives that demands plans from Big Tech companies to ensure the privacy of abortion seekers and to prevent the spread of health misinformation online, in light of heightened threats to reproductive freedom posed by a potential second Trump term and Project 2025.
“Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would abuse federal authority to carry out an all-out assault on reproductive rights – and if elected, he will use Big Tech as frontline enforcement,” said Nicole Gill, Executive Director of Accountable Tech. “Platforms have a responsibility to users to go beyond vague commitments and take meaningful action toward reducing the spread of medical misinformation and protecting data privacy for abortion seekers.”
Project 2025, a dangerous policy roadmap for a potential conservative administration, would rely heavily on tech companies to further devastating attacks on reproductive rights – weaponizing tech platforms to surveil and prosecute people seeking abortions and other reproductive health care.
The letter reads, “The millions of people who rely on your products everyday deserve to know how you will protect their privacy in the future and the steps you are taking now to mitigate against the potential harms should extreme and far-reaching restrictions on abortion care continue to be established. It’s not enough simply to make pro-choice promises to the press or to offer your employees the benefits all Americans should have access to. We implore you to act now to preserve data privacy for all people using your platforms and to protect the integrity of health information on your platforms.”
The letter – which outlines the consequences of a reinstated Comstock Act, the withdrawal of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidance on abortion, and the use of social media platforms and AI tools to spread false health information about abortion and contraception – confronts Big Tech’s complicity in further eroding reproductive rights and demands commitment from the industry to protect data privacy and prevent the spread of health mis- and disinformation.
The demands, addressed to the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, Yelp, and YouTube, are as follows:
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How will you reduce your collection and increase protection of the sensitive data of your users, especially information that could be used as evidence against someone seeking reproductive care – i.e. search history, location data, etc.? Are you working to encrypt the data you do collect and retain?
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If HIPAA and other health data protections were to be rolled back, what plans do you have in place to proactively protect this sensitive information?
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How will you regulate your AI tools that collect and retain more data that could be used against patients in the future? Will you allow users to opt in or out of their data being used to train AI models?
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How will you protect the integrity of and access to medically accurate abortion-related health information on your platforms?
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How will you ensure your increasingly used AI tools are promoting accurate information about reproductive health care, including abortion? Do you have open lines of communication with abortion care providers and experts?
Signatories include Accountable Tech, Abortion Forward, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Center for Intimacy Justice, Cobalt, Doctors for America, Ekō, Free Press, GLAAD, ProgressNow New Mexico, Reproaction, The Tech Oversight Project, UltraViolet, Vote Pro-Choice and 18 Million Rising.
Read the full letter here.
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