Hey there everyone! There's been a lot of big tech news mixed into this week's hubbub. For starters, Facebook is being sued for allegedly giving a contractor PTSD, New York signals action against crypto outfits, plus a look at international efforts to curb big tech companies' market presence. All that and more further below.

But what's good with you? Drop me a line on Twitter at @IanMichaelLopez or on email at [email protected].

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Dose of Dystopia: Is Facebook Traumatizing its Content Moderators?

Facebook is considered a place for friends, but try telling that to the content moderator suing the company for trauma she allegedly suffered after viewing thousands of images and videos depicting “child abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide, murder and other forms of extreme violence.”

That's the picture painted in the complaint, and leading the charge is a plaintiff who allegedly suffered PTSD “as a result of constant and unmitigated exposure to highly toxic and extremely disturbing images at the workplace.” Seem a bit far out? Consider Facebook's own transparency report, which reported that 3.4 million pieces of content were removed in Q1 of 2018. (The complaint, FWIW, notes content moderators are asked to scan 10 million posts for possible rules violations per week.)

And as big data gets bigger, so does the challenge of managing it within the legal framework. Facebook has been sued on a few fronts over data, including for allegedly allowing advertisers to use the platform to discriminate against women for job opportunities and biometrics data collection.

It isn't hard to fathom that the company simply might not be able to keep control of the data. However, as plaintiffs attorney Korey Nelson told The Recorder regarding the PTSD lawsuit, “Facebook is ignoring its duty to provide a safe workplace and instead creating a revolving door of contractors who are irreparably traumatized by what they witnessed on the job.”

To be fair, content moderation doesn't seem like a walk in the park. As one Facebook moderator told The Guardian in 2017: “You'd go into work at 9am every morning, turn on your computer and watch someone have their head cut off. Every day, every minute, that's what you see.” And tech's inability to grapple with that content precedes Facebook. Former Microsoft employees sued the tech giant in 2016, claiming their work removing child pornography and graphically violent content gave them PTSD.

The Seattle Times reports the complaint noted the employees claimed they “were not given proper mental-health support,” charges the company denies.

➤ Takeaway: The PTSD suit demonstrates how big tech companies can't always manage the ways their customers use their platforms, and the damage that can ensue. Whether the courts can grapple with the issue with the same expertise it handles other big data-related legal matters remains to be seen.

On The Radar: Three Things to Know

➤ No Kidding. Last week, I wrote about state AGs going after big tech for collecting data from kids via apps and smartphones. Joining the chorus are two U.S. congressmen, who sent a letter to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai to voice their concern that YouTube's data collection practices violate the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (YouTube is owned by Google). The concern isn't partisan. The authors of the letter are David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, and Jeff Fortenberry, a Republican from Nebraska. Their letter follows a complaint filed with the FTC in April by advocacy groups. Among the groups is Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, whose Josh Golin told the NY Times that federal and state lawmakers are “really stepping up and putting pressure on [big tech]companies that should be coming from the FTC.”

➤ Reference for Regulators. Speaking of AGs in action, New York's just referred three cryptocurrency trading platforms to the state's Department of Financial Services for potential regulatory violations. Those platforms are Binance, Gate.io and Kraken. Their failure to participate in a report on crypto market integrity raised eyebrows at the AGs office, but whether DFS takes action remains to be seen. Kraken took to Twitter, objecting to the “implication that because we did not respond to the voluntary information request we *might* be operating illegally. We told you we don't operate in NY. AG trying cases in court of public opinion now.” But the company also thanked New York taxpayers for funding the research, noting it got them some “interesting non-public info on our competitors. Excellent overview of issues, and a nice list of 'Questions Customers Should Ask.'”

➤ Legal Ops N Bots. AI contract tech startups are staffing up their ranks, and in house legal departments seem to be a breeding ground. And we're not just talking any corporate legal department—think Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Google, all of which have lost employees to new legal tech entrants. Why the migration? My colleague Rhys Dipshan explored this question, citing a desire to shape the legal ops space and for a more creative environment potential reasons to join the emerging tech scene. As former Hewlett-Packard Enterprises ops pro Nicole Arbriv told Dipshan: “For me, it was really around the notion that legal tech has become the up-and-coming thing that is driving the change of the legal profession.”

Devil in the Data: Big Tech's Big Antitrust Problem

Regulating big tech has proven to be a tricky frontier, and international authorities are searching for guidance in the form of antitrust laws. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager indicated at a press conference last Wednesday that she is launching a preliminary investigation into Amazon over what Inc.com dubbed its “dual role” as “both partner and rival” to “businesses that sell on its site.”

In Vestager's telling, the devil lies in the data—more specifically, how Amazon uses the information it collects from retailers using its platform to get a competitive edge. That idea isn't EU centric. In fact, it's part of a popular argument pushed by American academic Lina Khan. Nicknamed “hipster antitrust” by critics, the argument goes so far to claim that modern antitrust laws are ill equipped to tackle Amazon.

While the privacy-conscious EU is arguably ahead of the pack in using antitrust law to tackle tech, (they used it to go after Google for seemingly sketchy data collection practices, which I wrote about in July), it isn't alone in considering it.President Donald Trump issued a draft executive order directing antitrust and other federal agencies in the United States to see whether “any online platform” is running afoul of antitrust laws, The Verge reports. Politico's Cristiano Lima went as far as coining antitrust “the talk of the town” Tuesday, on which Attorney General Jeff Sessions gathered with other officials to chat about “allegations of bias and possible anticompetitive behavior by tech companies.”

The stateside popularity of such a measure, however, may translate a bit differently than with its EU counterpart. The White House itself is keeping a distance from Trump's doc, with three aides telling The Washington Post they neither wrote nor knew the origins of the draft order, and found it to be “unworkable policy.”

➤ Looking Ahead: It doesn't seem likely the U.S. will spearhead efforts to break up some of its most profitable companies. But if history is any indication, a more privacy-sensitive European Union seems to have no qualms with taking action against them, especially in levying fines.

That's it for this week! Stay tuned for What's Next!