Following action from users, admins, healthcare staff and advocates, Abbott have responded on the takedown shenanigans.
This seems to be a company statement that has been received by multiple people (which is understandable) and highlights that the issue is with the third party we mentioned yesterday.
It highlights the risks of outsourcing activities to third parties that don’t understand your customers, but also the risks associated with using blunt AI models without any kind of check and balance (and allows us to ask what the risks might be in other areas where this might be considered).
In the diabetes community we’ve seen a few of these actions from third parties in recent times, and dependent on scale they can generate bad pressure for providers very quickly.
Whilst Diabettech is pleased to see Abbott jump on this and resolve the issue quickly, it would be great if they could share what they’re doing to avoid a repeat of this mistake. We’d also like to what other healthcare companies have learned and would ask them to provide reassurance to their users in the diabetes world and more broadly that this has been broached with third parties.
This is known to have happened in the UK, Germany, Poland and Croatia, plus potentially others.
Now the takedown notice might suggest that Abbott have been reaching out to Facebook and demanding that these user-centric groups are removed, but when we look closer at the notice, we see that it isn’t Abbott directly.
Who is demanding the takedown?
As the email address of the agency that’s making this request highlights, it’s a company called Brandshield.
Brandshield, along with companies like Corsearch, pride themselves on using AI tools to find IP ingriging material and threaten the purveyors of those websites or other materials with legal action, unless they take it down. Diabettech has been subject to one of these “requests” itself.
Or in the case of these user groups, they go directly to Facebook with a “Remove these pages. Do not pass go. No right of appeal”.
Often this is outside of anyone in the Diabetes division’s knowledge of it happening.
It seems to be the result of a central legal or IP Rights team engaging these groups to root out dodgy sales, dodgy marketeering using the companies trademarks and other “nefarious” techniques. Whether they are actively focusing on user groups, or Brandshield has made a huge mistake remains to be seen.
Taking down communities of tens of thousands of users (one was in the order of 17,000) that have all been fairly loyal to the Libre, and by proxy, Abbott, Brand seems like a very dumb way of encouraging brand loyalty, especially in times where there are competing, similarly priced, products available.
What can users and admins do?
Most admins will have contacts at Abbott. If nothing else, they tend to be very good at keeping tabs on those writing about them or dealing with their products.
First and foremost, they should get in touch with them.
Users, who may not have those contacts, can contact the customer service phone numbers and emails, demanding to know why these groups, providing peer support that Abbott can’t, have been removed.
The bigger the noise, the better.
I’m reasonably certain that many in the Diabetes part of Abbott are unaware that Abbott Global have engaged these groups, or of the actions they are undertaking in Abbott’s name.
So first and foremost, if we care, let’s all make some noise.
And second, if you can, buy other makes of CGM. Dexcom One+ and Stelo are cost equivalent in most places to Libre2 and Libre3 variants.
Commercial impact will help.
Then, Abbott, it’s in your hands.
Was this intentional from Abbott Central? Then at least be open about it.
And if not, instruct Brandshield to reverse these takedowns.
Over to you…
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