@Silver Scroll  
Can you copy anything useful out of the paywall or find an alternative? It does no good to cite sources nopony can read.

@Background Pony #2BB0  
Are a few things slightly worse than they are in our world? For sure; that other one has had several more decades to get worse, after all. So no, we might not have penal battalions contemporarily, nor storage boxes for people (except as inhumane punishment). Corporations contracting out prison labour for tasks that they can’t find cheap enough workers for, though? (including dangerous ones?) Sorry, but we’re in that reality already (alas it’s behind a paywall.)
 
Someone who’s been through that might even refer to it as being auctioned off.
 
Also, I’m sure there’s scandals in the media in that world as well. And I’m sure they change just as much as in ours: a little bit, occasionally, but rarely enough to matter.
 
It’s actually depressing how often this comic does a thing and I’m “at least it isn’t that bad in reality,” and then I check, and it’s like that or worse.

@Silver Scroll  

 
Ah yes, the evil lying mass media. Covering up the truth about prisons auction of prisoners to work in mines or fight in war zones. XD
 
Yes, I’m aware that there a private prison in the US and that there have been some scandals about them. But guess what, many these scandals got public because of the media.

@Background Pony #2BB0  
I mean, it feels less real to readers because the media in our world do just as good a job at convincing us that this is not how our world works as the media in that futuristic world. It’s… sobering, to start digging under the surface.
 
As for why she has to hide… there could be all sorts of reasons! Maybe Pinkie doesn’t own the home or needs her kids’ support to make payments. Maybe if Cookie and Soda knew that Candy is there, they’d report her because they see her as a “vile criminal”. Maybe Candy is hiding because encountering them would be even more insanely traumatic than hiding from them, a confrontation they would force if they knew she was there because obviously, their “misguided” child needs to be “fixed” - but she also doesn’t want to force Pinkie to cut off contact to her offspring.
 
It takes literally only a few seconds of thought to make sense of it all from the perspective of the characters.

This is a story where an evil mega corps is shamelessly abusing its monopole on a medical drug and (cartoonishley evil) cops try to bait people into committing crimes to presumably full file their arrest quotes. Yet it all happens in a futuristic setting where the mega corps basically runs the government and the cops are on their payroll. So, this feels less real to most readers. But a transphobic family? That’s something all to real.
 
Still why does Candy have to hide? This is Pinkie’s home. Cookie and Soda are the guests. If they don’t like Candy staying with her Granma they are free to leave any time. And if the act like assholes Pinkie can kick them out.

(cw: implied transphobia)

I can probably guess how this whole arc is going to be just by seeing the tags in the source.