A Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) employees report has discovered that social media and video streaming firms have been participating in widespread consumer surveillance, notably of youngsters and youths, with inadequate privateness protections and incomes billions of {dollars} yearly by monetizing their knowledge.
The FTC’s findings have been launched after a probe that started in December 2020 and began with 6(b) orders despatched to Amazon (proprietor of Twitch), Meta (Fb), YouTube, Twitter (now X Corp.), Snapchat, TikTok (owned by ByteDance), Discord, Reddit, and WhatsApp (Meta) 4 years in the past, in December 2020.
The report relies on an investigation into the businesses’ knowledge assortment strategies, how they monitor private and demographic data, and the affect of those practices on minors from 2019 to 2020. Because the FTC revealed at this time, the outcomes increase vital considerations about knowledge retention, sharing practices, and focused promoting.
FTC Chair Lina M. Khan additional underscored the gravity of those findings at this time, saying the report reveals how these firms monetize an “monumental quantity of Individuals’ private knowledge,” incomes billions of {dollars} yearly.
“Whereas profitable for the businesses, these surveillance practices can endanger folks’s privateness, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a number of harms, from determine theft to stalking,” Khan mentioned. “A number of corporations’ failure to adequately shield children and youths on-line is particularly troubling.”
The FTC says the platforms collected large quantities of information, most of which was retained indefinitely. A number of firms engaged in broad knowledge sharing, typically with insufficient oversight, did not delete all consumer knowledge even after the customers requested it.
The businesses’ enterprise fashions additionally encourage the mass assortment of consumer knowledge to drive focused promoting, which generates most of their income. Because the experiences famous, this method immediately conflicts with consumer privateness and will increase the chance of misuse of non-public data.
The report additionally highlighted how social media and video streaming platforms fed consumer and non-user knowledge into algorithms and synthetic intelligence programs, typically with out permitting customers to choose out, elevating additional considerations about transparency, oversight, and potential shopper hurt.
One of many report’s most vital findings was the shortage of protections for kids and youths on these platforms, with many firms saying “that there are not any youngsters on their platforms as a result of their companies weren’t directed to youngsters,” seemingly in an try to keep away from compliance with the Kids’s On-line Privateness Safety Act (COPPA).
Nevertheless, the FTC’s report discovered that teenagers have been typically handled the identical as adults on these platforms, with few, if any, extra safeguards.
The FTC employees report urges policymakers to take motion, calling for Congress to go complete federal privateness laws, together with limits on knowledge assortment, stricter knowledge minimization and retention insurance policies, and extra clear and consumer-friendly privateness insurance policies.
It additionally asks firms to boost protections for teenagers and youngsters on their platforms, treating COPPA as a baseline and providing extra security and privateness safety measures.
“The Report’s findings are well timed, notably as state and federal policymakers take into account laws to guard folks from abusive knowledge practices,” Khan added.