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No, I don’t. To regard it as suspicious I would have to know: - Has this happened before? - are they actually compliant with the rules? Or are they being bann

No, I don’t. To regard it as suspicious I would have to know: - Has this happened before? - are they actually compliant with the rules? Or are they being banned and then unbanned because we’re sympathetic to them? - was anyone mass reporting them? Was this human or automatic? - how often are these things banned? It’s really a miracle most of these outfits are operating at all. In most cases we’re talking about filling out an anonymous form to get prescription medication. It’s not legal. Some of them try to provide a form of legality as a cover (“we definitely have a doctor review your anonymous form”) but not anything that would hold up to scrutiny. It’s not surprising that very few of them are likely following Facebooks rules on top of that. Of course maybe they should be legal and the situation should be totally different, but Facebook banning grey market prescription drug sellers that almost certainly violate their rules is not surprising. It’s also not surprising they ease up when the NYT asks about it even if there are rule violations because I doubt Meta wants any part of this debate.

ceejayoz 2y ago
> In most cases we’re talking about filling out an anonymous form to get prescription medication. Best of luck shipping pills to "nobody".
- vasco 2y ago
  How is that hard? You just need an address, doesn't even have to be yours.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    And a payment method and/or insurance details And you have to pick it up. If my address was listed next to my posts on Reddit, I would not feel super anonymous.
    - vasco 2y ago
      I'm not in the US and familiar with this but your comment seemed too different from the other guy's so I went to check. One of the first results in Google is https://www.plancpills.org/abortion-pill/california#pharmacies https://www.plancpills.org/abortion-pill/california#pharmaci... Listed there I checked some of their recommended stores. The first that I clicked accept Bitcoin payment and require no insurance details (medside24). It does look like it's possible to do this fully anonymous without much hassle. I have no problem with that by the way.
      - xethos 2y ago
        Oh good, an unalterable ledger stating the wallet associated with you paid for an abortion medication. Good thing the US is in a social headspace where none of us believe that that will be made retroactively illegal. Bitcoin is absolutely not anonymous. To believe otherwise is a grave error.
        vasco 2y ago
        You can't make an anonymous payment with crypto you got a skill issue
    - Amezarak 2y ago
      Payment methods are often things like Cashapp or BTC.
- Amezarak 2y ago
  People buy highly illegal drugs on the Internet all the time. Yes, most people regard an address as sufficiently anonymous, and either way, it's obviously not meaningfully doctor-supervised if a possibly-imaginary doctor never sees anything but an internet form you filled out. Again, I am not saying things should be this way, but we're talking about black/grey market prescription drug suppliers mailing prescription drugs to people pseudonymously/anonymously, usually/sometimes in violation of US law and almost certainly nearly always in violation of the FB rules I posted above. If this was literally any other prescription drug, nobody would find this result surprising. NB: In contradiction to one of your downthread posts, very few of these places are taking insurance information. (Maybe even "none", but I am willing to believe someone does.) Usually one of their selling points is that it is "private". The article for example cites Aid Access, which does not. Neither do any of the sites in the downstream commenter I clicked on. I encourage you to actually look at these sites and see how easy it is. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, but clearly it is not aboveboard.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    I would encourage you to check out the actual affected accounts from the article, which are listed. > The Instagram account of Hey Jane, another abortion pill provider, was recently invisible in Instagram search, said Rebecca Davis, who leads marketing at Hey Jane. https://www.heyjane.com/ https://www.heyjane.com/ Takes government insurance. Telehealth appointment. > The Instagram accounts of other abortion pill providers, including Women Help Women and Just the Pill, were also suspended in recent days. https://justthepill.com/ https://justthepill.com/ Telehealth, looking to take Medicaid. Specific states only, presumably due to it being properly regulated. They’re going after the prescribing docs now. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr8jv2yjz9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr8jv2yjz9o
    - Amezarak 2y ago
      I did, as I said, I went through Aid Access. I checked some of the others as well. > Telehealth, looking to take Medicaid. "Looking to take Medicaid" is a strange way of saying they currently do not accept any form of insurance. Hey Jane is the only one I have seen thus far. And of course, there's a reason why they also accept eg. Cashapp rather than just taking CC/debit cards - they expect most of their customers will not want them to have any actual information on them. And again, any prescription med promotion, including 100 legit prescription meds, require some byzantine bureaucratic process with FB themselves - not just being legal or de facto legal.

ceejayoz 2y ago

> In most cases we’re talking about filling out an anonymous form to get prescription medication. Best of luck shipping pills to "nobody".

vasco 2y ago
How is that hard? You just need an address, doesn't even have to be yours.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  And a payment method and/or insurance details And you have to pick it up. If my address was listed next to my posts on Reddit, I would not feel super anonymous.
  - vasco 2y ago
    I'm not in the US and familiar with this but your comment seemed too different from the other guy's so I went to check. One of the first results in Google is https://www.plancpills.org/abortion-pill/california#pharmacies https://www.plancpills.org/abortion-pill/california#pharmaci... Listed there I checked some of their recommended stores. The first that I clicked accept Bitcoin payment and require no insurance details (medside24). It does look like it's possible to do this fully anonymous without much hassle. I have no problem with that by the way.
    - xethos 2y ago
      Oh good, an unalterable ledger stating the wallet associated with you paid for an abortion medication. Good thing the US is in a social headspace where none of us believe that that will be made retroactively illegal. Bitcoin is absolutely not anonymous. To believe otherwise is a grave error.
      - vasco 2y ago
        You can't make an anonymous payment with crypto you got a skill issue
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    Payment methods are often things like Cashapp or BTC.
Amezarak 2y ago
People buy highly illegal drugs on the Internet all the time. Yes, most people regard an address as sufficiently anonymous, and either way, it's obviously not meaningfully doctor-supervised if a possibly-imaginary doctor never sees anything but an internet form you filled out. Again, I am not saying things should be this way, but we're talking about black/grey market prescription drug suppliers mailing prescription drugs to people pseudonymously/anonymously, usually/sometimes in violation of US law and almost certainly nearly always in violation of the FB rules I posted above. If this was literally any other prescription drug, nobody would find this result surprising. NB: In contradiction to one of your downthread posts, very few of these places are taking insurance information. (Maybe even "none", but I am willing to believe someone does.) Usually one of their selling points is that it is "private". The article for example cites Aid Access, which does not. Neither do any of the sites in the downstream commenter I clicked on. I encourage you to actually look at these sites and see how easy it is. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, but clearly it is not aboveboard.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  I would encourage you to check out the actual affected accounts from the article, which are listed. > The Instagram account of Hey Jane, another abortion pill provider, was recently invisible in Instagram search, said Rebecca Davis, who leads marketing at Hey Jane. https://www.heyjane.com/ https://www.heyjane.com/ Takes government insurance. Telehealth appointment. > The Instagram accounts of other abortion pill providers, including Women Help Women and Just the Pill, were also suspended in recent days. https://justthepill.com/ https://justthepill.com/ Telehealth, looking to take Medicaid. Specific states only, presumably due to it being properly regulated. They’re going after the prescribing docs now. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr8jv2yjz9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr8jv2yjz9o
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    I did, as I said, I went through Aid Access. I checked some of the others as well. > Telehealth, looking to take Medicaid. "Looking to take Medicaid" is a strange way of saying they currently do not accept any form of insurance. Hey Jane is the only one I have seen thus far. And of course, there's a reason why they also accept eg. Cashapp rather than just taking CC/debit cards - they expect most of their customers will not want them to have any actual information on them. And again, any prescription med promotion, including 100 legit prescription meds, require some byzantine bureaucratic process with FB themselves - not just being legal or de facto legal.