What happened

Politico discovered customer service company Loris.ai had been using CLT data and insights to develop, market and sell customer service optimisation software. 

It also transpired that CLT was a shareholder in Loris.ai and, according to Politico, the nonprofit and for-profit entities had overlapping leadership and ownership ties. CTL’s terms of service included a lengthy disclosure that users “consented” to data sharing by continuing to use the service. 

Volunteers had earlier expressed concerns about CLT's handling of mental health conversations data, with one civil engineer volunteer starting a Change.org petition pushing CTL “to reform its data ethics.” 

Under pressure from politicians, regulators, privacy experts and mental health practitioners, CLT ended the practice of sharing conversation data with Loris.

Why it happened

The incident stemmed from an attempt to both leverage large-scale, unique crisis data for social benefit (improving general empathy in conversations) and secure a revenue stream for the non-profit by commercialising the insights through a for-profit entity. 

CTL justified the arrangement as a way to leverage its large dataset, which it called "the largest mental health data set in the world," containing millions of anonymised conversation transcripts between people in crisis (experiencing suicidal ideation, abuse, etc.) and volunteer counsellors, to develop machine learning tools that could extend its de-escalation and empathy capabilities beyond the service and potentially generate support for its mission. 

However, the shared history, leadership, and financial relationship between the non-profit and the for-profit spinoff created a fundamental conflict of interest, where the ethical obligation to protect vulnerable users was compromised by a commercial objective.