The FDA is also actively monitoring the social media sites of kratom vendors. As PNN reported last month, one vendor received a warning letter from the FDA for sharing on its Facebook page a CNN story about the herbal supplement as a possible treatment for pain and opioid addiction. The vendor only said the story was “positive news for kratom,” but the FDA said that amounted to the illegal marketing of an unapproved drug.

“The FDA thus faces challenges as we confront the opioid crisis and monitor changing patterns of use, abuse, and misuse of other products,” Gottlieb wrote. “The right approach to regulating these substances is best determined through a multifaceted system of pharmacovigilance, using various tools to mine traditional and new sources of epidemiologic data, assess products’ pharmacologic properties, and evaluate the social contexts in which substances are being used.”

To be clear, the FDA’s surveillance of social media isn’t very different from what private enterprise is already doing. NUVI, for example, provide social media monitoring to companies “to get real-time insights into what people are saying about your brand online.” Companies also sell software that track keywords, hashtags and user profiles on social media. And PatientsLikeMe, the largest online patient network with over 600,000 members, sells some of its data to the FDA and healthcare industry.

At PNN, we do stories all the time about opioids, kratom, gabapentinoids and other drugs. Is Pain News Network under surveillance by the FDA? Are reader comments on our website and social media being monitored? We don’t know. But in an age of growing concern about Internet privacy and the sharing of personal data, we thought you should know that the answer could be yes.