The Dark Side of Online Therapy Apps

Online therapy apps, including BetterHelp, Talkspace, and Cerebral, have been caught engaging in creepy and harmful data-sharing practices that treat people in need of help as prospective sources of profit instead of as patients. The mushrooming tech-based mental-health industry has a dark side, with reports revealing a dangerous cocktail of tech solutionism, abuse of consumer trust, and regulatory failure that puts highly vulnerable people at risk. Despite being touted as the fix for the broken healthcare system, the industry's "move fast and break things" mindset is pushing them to chase growth and replicate the worst excesses of their Silicon Valley predecessors.