The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a disturbing report revealing that top social media and video streaming services engage in large scale surveillance of users and monetize their personal information.
According to the report released on 19th September, these platforms also fail to provide adequate protection for users, with children and teens being the most vulnerable.
Investigating social media and streaming services
The FTC issued 6(b) orders in December 2020 to nine of the largest social media and video streaming services.
These include Amazon.com, Inc., Facebook Inc. (now Meta Platforms, Inc.); YouTube LLC; Twitter Inc. (now X Corp.); Snap Inc.; ByteDance Ltd., which owns TikTok; Discord Inc.; Reddit Inc.; and WhatsApp Inc.
The aim was to gather information about the companies’ collection and handling of personal and demographic information to determine how they show ads and other content to consumers.
The agency also sought to know how these companies use algorithms or data analytics to manipulate personal and demographic information, and how these approaches may affect children and teens.
The investigation found that the companies collect and indefinitely hold onto sensitive data from data brokers, users, as well as non-users of their platforms.
The data sharing approaches of many of the companies also suggest that there are no adequate data handling controls and oversight in place.
Many of the companies also provide incentives to collect and monetize user data by using privacy-invading tracking technologies such as pixels to advertise to users in direct violation of user privacy laws.
Even worse, they did not allow users and non-users to opt out of allowing their data to be fed into their automated systems through their algorithms, data analytics, and AI.
More disturbing is the fact that these social media and streaming services didn’t provide adequate protection tailored towards children and teens.
While some of the companies claim they do not allow children to sign up on their platforms, the FTC says that was just a strategy to evade responsibility for violating Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule.
With these practices, the FTC believes that companies are likely to prioritize data acquisition over user privacy, as companies with the largest amount of user data are likely to dominate the market.
Taking action
With the information revealed through this investigation, the FTC was concerned and made recommendations to curtail the illegal use of information by these platforms.
In addition, the agency is therefore organizing a virtual workshop to examine how online platforms retain the attention of children and teens on their platform.
The event seeks to know how companies design platforms to engage and retain the attention of children and teens.
It also seeks to examine the positive and negative physical and psychological impacts of the design features on the wellbeing of young users.
Participants will also explore measures or design considerations that are in line with current legal demands.
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