Under fire from critics over its privacy practices, Facebook is implementing a sweeping ban on advertisers targeting patients with messages based on their health conditions. And that could be bad news for drug development.
The decision by the social media giant, which takes effect in January, is part of a broader push to remove ad-targeting options for what it calls "sensitive" topics and is getting measured praise from patient privacy advocates. But critics of the restrictions say the move could have an unintended side effect: Slowing biomedical research by making it harder to use Facebook to recruit people for clinical trials.
But some recruiters who used the platform to find participants in clinical trials “will feel a hit, making something that’s already hard harder,” said Dan Brenner, CEO of Orlando-based medical recruitment firm 1nHealth. Studies researching the coronavirus as well as dermatological and mental health conditions like depression especially rely on such recruitment, he added.
“We might be learning that concentrated regulation of speech by powerful private platforms is thorny and could come with unpredictable consequences,” she said.
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