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FTC Report Reveals Extensive User Surveillance, Woefully Inadequate Privacy Practices by Major Social Media and Streaming Platforms

Sep 19, 2024, 07:24 PM

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report on Thursday revealing that major social media and streaming platforms, including Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Meta, TikTok, and Google, have engaged in extensive surveillance of their users. The report criticizes these companies for their woefully inadequate data privacy practices and highlights the urgent need for tighter restrictions on how personal information is collected, used, and retained. The FTC specifically calls out the monetization of user data through advertising tracking and data broker ecosystems, which has resulted in significant privacy risks and harms. The report also emphasizes the lack of adequate protections for children and teens, exposing them to various risks. FTC Chair Lina Khan stated that these practices endanger people's privacy and expose them to a host of harms. The report suggests that social media companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves and hints at future regulations to address these issues. The FTC report also notes that this mass surveillance has been ongoing for two decades.