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'social network' attacking pesticide critics shuts down after investigation
v-Fluence halts operations after widespread backlash over private portal profiling environmental health advocates
A US company that was secretly profiling hundreds of food and environmental health advocates in a private web portal has said it has halted the operations in the face of widespread backlash, after its actions were revealed by the Guardian and other reporting partners. The St Louis, Missouri-based company, v-Fluence, said it is shuttering the service, which it called a “stakeholder wiki”, that featured personal details about more than 500 environmental advocates, scientists, politicians and others seen as opponents of pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. After the operations were made public in articles by the Guardian and media partners, v-Fluence engaged a law firm to conduct an independent review of whether or not the profiling may have violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR).
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