"Unacceptable"! US regulators accuse social media giants such as Amazon, Meta of collecting and retaining personal information on a large scale, conducting "mass surveillance"

US regulatory agencies in a recent report accused Meta and other social media and streaming services of posing serious risks to user privacy in terms of data collection, conducting "mass surveillance" by collecting and retaining consumers' personal information, deeming this situation "unacceptable".

On Thursday, September 19th, Eastern Time, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report written by its staff, titled "Behind the Scenes - Examining Data Practices of Social Media and Streaming Services", revealing the results of the agency's investigation into 13 platforms operated by nine social media and streaming companies from January 2019 to February 2020. These media are currently owned by eight companies, namely Amazon, Facebook and WhatsApp under Meta, YouTube under Alphabet, X (formerly Twitter), Snap, Discord, Reddit, and TikTok's parent company ByteDance.

The FTC stated that the investigation in the report aimed to unveil the "opaque" data collection practices of tech giants. The report found that the self-regulation of the investigated tech giants was inadequate, with pervasive commercial surveillance and problematic incentive mechanisms in the digital economy where data brokers are authorized to trade personal information with businesses. Most of the companies surveyed were found to collect large amounts of data from users and non-users both on and off their platforms. Social media giants collected "astonishing" amounts of information about consumers' locations, personal interests, health conditions, and religious beliefs.

Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote in this over 100-page report:

"The tech industry monetizes personal data, giving rise to a commercial surveillance market."

"In fact, these (investigated) companies have collected so much data that they often cannot even identify all the data points they have collected or all the third parties with whom they share data when answering questions from the (FTC) Commission."

The report detailed the efforts of the companies under investigation in data, advertising, and recommendation systems, as well as how they sell advertising based on user information. It stated that these companies use a variety of means to obtain personal information to support AI, algorithms, and data analysis. In addition to data directly provided by users, platforms extract information from users' messages, conversations, locations, screen sizes, and browser settings.

By 2020, most of the surveyed social media platforms had relied on artificial intelligence (AI) to generate content recommendations or infer users' detailed personal information, with users lacking " any effective control over how the AI systems on company platforms use personal information."

The report mentioned that many companies retain large amounts of data indefinitely by implementing incomplete deletion policies or failing to comply with deletion requests. Social media platforms collect data about online users from advertisers, affiliates, data brokers, web tracking technologies, and AI-generated inferences. " This type of tracking mostly occurs behind the scenes, without the user's knowledge, and they are unable to avoid what is happening."

"Overall, (users) lack access, choice, control, transparency, explanation, and interpretation of the use of automated systems by (surveyed) companies."

FTC Chairman Lina Khan stated in a press release accompanying the report:

"These monitoring behaviors may be profitable for businesses, but they could jeopardize people's privacy, threaten their freedom, and expose them to a range of harms from identity theft to tracking."

The report highlighted "serious concerns" identified in the investigation, stating that the monitoring of these platforms poses the greatest privacy threat to children and teenagers. Media platforms have failed to adequately protect children, especially teenagers, treating these users' data collection and processing "as if they were adults." Most surveyed companies have not reported implementing any additional protections related to data sharing for children or teenagers. Overall, these platforms "turn a blind eye to children using their services."

In the report's recommendations, FTC staff called on the U.S. federal government to enact privacy legislation and urged companies to prioritize privacy in data collection and recommendation systems. It also emphasized that parents should have more control over the collection of information about children and teenagers. The report stated:

"Protecting users—especially children and teenagers—requires clear fundamental protections that apply across the board."

FTC urged Congress to enact comprehensive data privacy laws to curb monitoring and empower consumers with enforceable rights. It also called for companies to implement advertising protection measures to prevent the receipt, use, and disclosure of sensitive data for targeted advertising campaigns.

FTC stated that for data used to support automated decision-making systems, companies should give users more control and increase transparency. The report stated: "Many companies are unwilling or unable to provide the FTC with specific details on the breadth of data they collect from various sources, their lack of comprehensive written policies or the absence of such policies, and their extensive sharing with affiliates or third parties, raising serious concerns about whether their data processing control and oversight are sufficient."

In response to the above report from the FTC, a spokesperson for X later responded via email, stating that since the period covered by the report, X has made significant progress in protecting user safety. Currently, only about 1% of X's U.S. users are aged 13 to 17. X places great importance on user data privacy, ensuring that users understand the data they share with the platform and how it is used, while providing them with options to restrict data collection from their accounts. X looks forward to continuing its long-term partnerships with organizations such as NCMEC, Thorn, Tech Coalition, and many others dedicated to protecting children online.

A spokesperson for Google stated in an email that the company "has the strictest privacy policies in the industry—we never sell people's personal information or show personalized ads based on sensitive information. We also prohibit personalized advertising for users under 18, and we do not serve personalized ads on 'child-directed content' on YouTube, regardless of the viewer." Kate Sheerin, Discord's public policy lead for the United States and Canada, stated in an email that the FTC's categorization of different types of companies in its report may confuse consumers as it does not accurately describe platforms like Discord. Discord is a real-time communication platform with strong user privacy controls. At the time of the FTC investigation, Discord had not yet operated a formal digital advertising service, which is the focus of the FTC report. The company looks forward to sharing more information about Discord and how it protects user information.

Other platforms mentioned in the FTC report have not responded yet