Meta, ByteDance, Amazon and other large social and streaming companies are said to have collected massive amounts of data, disregarded the privacy of users and established hardly any protective measures for young people. These are the results of an FTC report that brings to light not only known but also shocking facts.
Criticism of the practices of and often court rulings against large social media companies such as Meta and ByteDance are not uncommon. For example, Meta’s pay-or-consent model was recently deemed a DMA violation, while TikTok faces an uncertain future in the USA – also due to data protection concerns of the US government. Now the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a reportwhich once again sharply criticizes the data protection practices of numerous large social and streaming companies.
No deletion of data, but collection on a large scale
The FTC accuses the corporations and companies, including Amazon, Meta, YouTube, X, Snap, ByteDance, Discord, Reddit and WhatsApp, of extensively monitoring their own users while neglecting the privacy of users and failing to provide protection for children and young people. The companies, the report says, have collected data from a variety of sources – including advertising tracking technologies, data from advertisers and data brokers, data analytics and even artificial intelligence.
FTC Chair Lina M. Khan stresses in a statement that the effects of the companies’ practices are enormously lucrative for them, but devastating for the privacy of users:
The report lays out how social media and video streaming companies harvest an enormous amount of Americans’ personal data and monetize it to the tune of billions of dollars a year. While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking. Several firms’ failure to adequately protect kids and teens online is especially troubling. The Report’s findings are timely, particularly as state and federal policymakers consider legislation to protect people from abusive data practices.
A notable finding of the report is the fact that many of the companies examined store user data indefinitely – in some cases even when users have requested that the data be deleted. In addition, data was collected not only from users, but also from non-users of the platforms for their own purposes. The FTC describes the companies’ data collection, minimization and retention practices as “extremely inadequate”.
Hardly any protective measures for children and young people
The FTC’s findings regarding the lack of protective measures taken by Meta, ByteDance and others towards children and teenagers are also worrying. The mental health of young people is negatively affected by the use of social media platforms, the report states. In addition, the services do not treat teenage users any differently than adult users; in many cases, no additional security measures have been implemented. However, Instagram recently announced the launch of special accounts for teenagers, which could at least begin to counteract this problem.
With major restrictions:
Instagram launches accounts for teenagers
Some of the corporations and companies are also accused of increasing their market dominance through the massive accumulation of user data and thus distorting competition. The report finally makes some recommendations on how the corporations mentioned can minimize their harmful practices. This includes limiting the storage and sharing of data, restricting targeted advertising and increasing protection for children and young people. However, it is questionable whether the corporations will actually implement the authority’s recommendations in view of the potential loss of sales.
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Source: onlinemarketing.de
