
Predatory Behavior Runs Rampant in Facebook’s Addiction Support Groups - DmenshunlAnlsis
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/21/17370066/facebook-addiction-support-groups-rehab-patient-brokering
======
FearNotDaniel
My understanding from friends who spent time in 12 Step groups a few years ago
was that the general consensus was for people in the groups to actively
discourage each other from connecting on Facebook and other social media and
from otherwise revealing their status as "recovering addicts" in these
avenues. The expectation of this sort of thing happening was already there,
and the principle of anonymity is already broken just by going online and
discussing these things. As I understand it, the in-person groups were
generally quite effective at self-policing to discourage commercial interests
from creeping in. Of course, for people in rural, isolated situations some
online contact with others might be the only option. Generally, the groups
themselves run online forums and Skype group meetings for these situations.
They may not be as flashy and all-pervasive as jumping on the latest social
media hype train, but they are a heck of a lot safer when this sort of thing
is going on.

~~~
exelius
Agree in-person help is required, but the groups aren’t for everyone.
Personally I kicked my habit with a psychiatrist, a therapist and some new
friends — sometimes that’s all you need.

Really the thing folks need most is someone they know knows their world.
Someone to pierce the veil and tell you it’s all bullshit, and that if you
want help you have to actually want help. This is what addicts are looking for
online, and unfortunately it’s all too easy to manipulate people in this
state.

Dealers and con men taking advantage of this ease of manipulation is as old as
drug addiction.

This happens in NA/AA meetings too, but the sponsors are usually pretty good
at spotting them. I don’t trust Facebook to play that role.

------
docdeek
Previous reporting by the author of this piece also inspired a great episode
of the Reply All podcast last week. [0]

[0] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain-
funnel](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain-funnel)

~~~
oflannabhra
Totally agree. For folks not wanting to listen to the whole episode (although
you should!) the basic synopsis is:

Obamacare mandated that all insurance should cover rehab costs. Several
rehabilitation companies opened an enormous amount of "clinics" in Florida.
"Rehab SEO" companies then offered services to these clinics to funnel
patients to them. Clinics could charge upwards of $5,000 per urine test from
the insurance companies.

It became so profitable, that rehab companies would pay to fly patients down
to Florida, pay $1,500 commissions to the SEO companies, and more.

This system of misaligned incentives resulted in the "rehab" companies to buy
drugs for their patients, so that they would fail a drug test. This would
allow them to "reset" billing for that patient. There is an anecdote from a
patient describing one such clinic directly next to a crackhouse with
prostitutes. Apparently many patients spent years rotating through these
clinics because they had no other options (except maybe homelessness, due to
their addictions).

Florida eventually legislated rules that prevented this behavior, which
resulted in many of these "rehab" clinics moving to California.

More reporting on this system:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/addi...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/addiction-
inc.html)

[https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/sober-
homes/](https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/sober-homes/)

------
achievingApathy
The same is true for anything remotely to do with credit or credit repair.
There is a whole rat's nest of companies run out of the same PO Box in
Minnesota that was shut down by the governor at least a few times now, but
they basically have people go on and on about how these repair places worked
miracles and post fake pics of "credit reports" that show these amazing 70-80
point boosts overnight. Now those sorts of jumps can happen but they are the
exception, not the rule. They give shoddy credit advice to people so their
scores initially go down to make them eager to sign up for a monthly recurring
bill where they will basically sit on their hands and collect a check. It's
revolting.

~~~
howard941
There's one of those that hawks bad terrible credit advice products on local
PBS pledge drives, leveraging PBS's credibility to bolster her own. Same with
the shady quacks peddling their snake oil. All revoltingly trading on the
vulnerabilities of others.

------
bmans94
I immediately assumed, upon reading the title, that this was some sort of
Facebook Addiction group, rather than addiction groups on Facebook. I live a
pretty shielded life as far as knowing/seeing legitimate drug addicts, but I
found it interesting that I know many people who would definitely benefit from
Facebook/social media addiction therapy. Probably communicating over email.

------
greggarious
Along similar lines, Reply All recently did a segment on predatory "treatment"
centers that basically milk money from Medicare w/o providing effective
treatment:

[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain-
funnel#episod...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain-
funnel#episode-player)

~~~
exelius
Same author actually. But yes, Medicare fraud is all too common. I honestly
don’t understand why — Medicare fraud is very easy to catch with modern
analytics and the penalties are stiff. But it persists...

CMS is moving to outcome-based payments for this reason. Too many relapses
coming from your treatment center? You get less per patient until your results
improve. That should eventually help reduce this kind of behavior.

~~~
njarboe
May reduce this kind of behavior but this type of measurement for competency
selects for centers that only recruit and accept people that are likely to
recover and not the hard cases (who are the people most in need of the
service). Hard core addicts need not apply. The principle/agent problem pops
up everywhere.

------
neurotech1
Slightly OT: John Oliver did an interesting, albeit satirical, piece on rehab
centers last night.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y)

------
stemc43
I use reddit's stopdrinking subreddit - it's very good.

------
fiatjaf
In some years we'll begin to see actual Facebook Addiction Support Groups.

~~~
pc86
Where will they meet though?

~~~
gowld
Google+?

------
CPLX
> There’s a very long history of people going to [12-step] meetings and being
> taken advantage of by drug dealers

No, there isn't. This seems like another pop-culture meme that comes out of
drug war hysteria.

~~~
alxndr
I don't know about a long history, but it does happen today. Source: I know
someone who is a substance abuse counselor.

~~~
anon823274
I've been going to meetings for 21 years, and this is utter nonsense.

~~~
ggg9990
Perhaps different people's experiences are different?

~~~
anon823274
21 years of direct experience all over the country is hardly equivalent to
"knows a guy who said a thing."

~~~
carc1n0gen
Youre also just a guy who said a thing though

------
mieseratte
Reading the title, I had assumed this was just going to be the digitization of
the typical AA / NA creep hitting on "fellow" attendees, or drug dealer
looking for clientele. Instead this is predatory companies looking for a meal
ticket.

I can't help but think just how much the internet opens the door to bad actors
trying to pillage and plunder. Really makes this line of work feel like a
massive mistake.

~~~
technofiend
>Reading the title, I had assumed this was just going to be the digitization
of the typical AA / NA creep hitting on "fellow" attendees [...]

One of my friends from high school jokingly told me they call that the
thirteenth step. So it must be pretty widespread to have a name, which is sad.
You go some place for help and your fellow attendees prey upon you instead.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't think it needs to be that sinister; people tend to form relationships
with those they feel emotionally close to, and there's probably a pretty rapid
onset of intimacy in support groups like that.

I'm not saying there aren't predators, mind you, I just don't think that every
relationship there stems from one person trying to take advantage of another.

~~~
ggg9990
Also... there is a severely reduced dating pool for someone actively in the
middle of addiction recovery. If I had met a girl when I was single who said
“I’m a recovering X addict with 32 days sober” I most likely would have not
been very romantically interested. And if I was, it would be hard to connect
with something when I have no experience of something so dominant in her life.

------
bayonetz
There is a great recent Reply All podcast episode called Pain Funnel on shady
rehabs. Diabolical, perverse-incentive capitalism at its finest. For example,
giving drugs to teens kicked out of one rehab so that they can “piss dirty” to
get accepted to a new detox/rehab. On top of the drugs, they give them a cash
bonus for doing it. The rehabs then do stuff like urine screens three times
per day which they can bill insurance at $5000 per screen. Insane!

------
RickJWagner
"Don't talk to strangers" is applicable to social media, too.

~~~
taejavu
You realise that advice is for children, right?

------
hacknewsleet
This is nothing new, rehabs do the same predatory shit and provide terrible
treatment, in order to keep addicts relapsing and coming back. See John
Oliver’s latest episode today.

~~~
phkahler
Never thought about that. Poor treatment means repeat customers. It's the same
thing that drives pharma to seek treatments for symptoms over cures.

------
orf
> Marketers from the treatment center had to approve every post in the group,
> which gave them the first opportunity to privately message good candidates
> for their rehab and try to talk them into going to Windward in California.
> They needed that edge, Mendoza explained to me a few weeks ago, because they
> knew a Facebook group that big would be full of other marketers, waiting to
> swoop in as soon as a juicy message was public.

There is something uniquely... American about this comment. By that I mean
that divorced from the ethics setting up large Facebook groups and using them
to funnel patients into your addiction center is a _great_ strategy, and it
clearly works. It seems, to me at least, to make good business sense. That's
not to say that the practice itself is unique to America, more that it's
encouraged by the hyper capitalist 'profit above all else' that America
espouses.

After taking a step backwards however then you're just exploiting/taking
advantage of vulnerable people looking for help and using that to manipulate
them into giving you money.

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> After taking a step backwards you're just exploiting/taking advantage of
vulnerable people looking for help and using that to manipulate them into
giving you money._

This describes an uncomfortably large section of our (customer facing)
economy. Casinos, tobacco, payday loan sharks, etc are the obvious actors. But
if you look more closely, you will see that there are essentially two families
of competing in b2c:

* productive: quality, service, price.

* destructive: bait and switch, seduction through marketing (unrelated to the actual product), etc.

All of the destructive forms eventually boil down to: abusing the faults in
our human brain. Once you start looking at the world this way, you will see it
_everywhere_. Almost every commercial on tv is destructive. E.g. car
commercials never talk about car specs; they just try to seduce your fallible
brain. Perfume. Clothing brands. Any food franchising (which are not about
food, they are marketing companies who happen to sell food). Etc etc etc. None
of these advance society forward.

There is an all-out, 24/7 war on your brain. It is what hippies mean when they
talk about “buying shit you don’t need”. The only problem with that statement
is it puts the blame with the consumer. But we are only human, and fighting a
mental war 24/7 is exhausting. The problem is more insidious than mere
gluttony / consumerism.

The example here is egregious and very clear. But make no mistake about it: it
exists, in smaller form, everywhere you go.

~~~
maxxxxx
"There is an all-out, 24/7 war on your brain."

And the sad part is that a lot of our brightest people work at Google,
Facebook and others to win that war for the seducers.

~~~
lyzan
As long consumers keep paying more to be advertised to (buying) than they're
willing to pay to not (donations, subscriptions, boycotting) it'll stay a
lopsided game.

It seems to me like there's plenty of good people willing to fight the good
fight, but their lifestyle comes first and ideals second.

~~~
salawat
That only works if companies actually support that option. Many don't, because
it would cut into the data that could be collected and remarketed.

Furthermore, try sitting down with a teen, twenty, thirty, or heck, anyone not
technologically inclined and try to explain the causes and ills that
"marketing" causes. It is difficult. However, many are aware of and despise
it, but have no idea what to do about it.

I'm sorry, but GP is right. Advertising has gone too far. It really is just
customer predation at this point. It is no longer about making sure your
business is out there if the consumer comes looking, it is about exploiting
every heuristic that can be used to short circuit the consumer making a
conscious decision to see anyone else but you.

At some point, the intrusion and attention manipulation has to end.

~~~
sidr
> Many don't, because it would cut into the data that could be collected and
> remarketed.

The reason advertising companies collect all this data is to use it for
marketing/advertising (among other things). The truth of the matter is that
Google et. al. would lose users if they charged them what it actually cost to
run and continually improve their services and make a profit (which is their
prerogative/duty as for-profit companies).

Consumers may say that they'd be open to paying for services, but I have a
strong suspicion this is not true at a large enough scale to be even worth
exploring.

People paying for online streaming services versus cable may be a counter to
that argument, although then it seems like it takes decades for the ad-fatigue
to set in...or the ratio of ads to content has to steadily keep increasing
until it reaches the tipping point where people would rather pay (and still
throw a fit when Netflix raises their prices).

~~~
philipkglass
_People paying for online streaming services versus cable may be a counter to
that argument, although then it seems like it takes decades for the ad-fatigue
to set in._

Pay-TV over cable arrived in the US in 1972. Netflix's streaming service was
first available in 2007. The problem wasn't that people took decades to be
annoyed by advertising on cable but that for decades Netflix (Hulu, Amazon
Prime, HBO Now) did not exist. Once paid commercial-free streaming services
arrived, uptake was rapid.

~~~
BeetleB
Your example doesn't refute his point.

20 years ago, I knew plenty of people who would be willing to pay good money
for a TV service without ads.

Today I find almost no one willing to pay _enough_ for, say, Facebook without
ads. Most people I asked say $0 or $1/month. To get the same revenue as they
currently do, FB would need to charge $20/year to _everyone_. Since many
(most) will not pay that amount, they need to charge even higher.

I don't see how a company like Facebook would make that much profit without
ads.

And to be frank, decent enough non-ad supported alternatives exist. I can't
get one person in real life to switch to them.

News is another example that mostly hasn't worked without ad money. There are
some examples (e.g. government funded), but even those don't have enough reach
compared to what the ad supported ones did 20 years ago.

That it worked for TV is not an indicator that the general model can be
applied to all ad-supported services out there.

------
m3kw9
Strong found a dwelling for the weak, and preyed on them.

------
lb1lf
That’s just Sutton’s Law at work.

(Willie Sutton was a notorious bank robber, who allegedly upon being asked why
he robbed banks, replied «Because that’s where the money is!»)

While distinctly in poor taste, it can hardly be a surprise that these groups
are preyed upon by marketers.

~~~
JackFr
To some extent this is like the garbage for profit universities, for which
Federal student aid is the target and the wrecked student finances are merely
collateral damage. In this case insurance money is the target, and its not
important whether anyone is helped.

What makes such problems difficult is that they precisely cannot be solved by
_throwing more money at the problem_ which in many cases can exacerbate them.

------
SiempreViernes
> “I reached out to Laurie to see how I could help,” Calvert responded when I
> reached out to her.

Man, what's with this fascination with "reaching out"? Here we a sales person
targeting victims of addiction for a sales pitch terming it "reaching out",
setting up some pretty negative associations of that phrase. Yet the
journalist is so conditioned they use the very same words for the process of
requesting a comment from one of villains of the story!

I guess it's just poor editing, but the blindness is still remarkable!

~~~
bmans94
You could spin it even more, calling it an “outreach program”! Yeah, that term
has come to be industry standard for “I want something from you, so I am going
to now insert myself into your life until I manipulate you into giving it to
me”.

------
jonnycomputer
The weak, the desperate, the vulnerable--these are always the first to be
victimized by the self-interested and unscrupulous, the scammers, the cons,
the gutter scum.

~~~
mikec3010
You could say the same thing about doctors. How dare they try to collect a
paycheck saving vulnerable trauma patients who can't even consent to
treatment.

To me, where it becomes a scam is if/when they proffer completely ineffective
treatments. If this place happens to make a buck while saving someone's life,
more power to them.

~~~
s73v3r_
"You could say the same thing about doctors. How dare they try to collect a
paycheck saving vulnerable trauma patients who can't even consent to
treatment."

No, you really can't.

------
gowld
Therapy is a _terrible_ match for the free market. The fundamental axioms of
free trade are in contradiction when participants' irrationality is one of of
the axioms.

Look at how aggressively advertisers bid for ad spots on [credit counseling
services]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+counseling+services](https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+counseling+services)

------
ggg9990
I know the “correct” Silicon Valley position is to be anti-death penalty, but
damn there are some people who need to be doused in gasoline and set on fire.

