The Federal Trade Commission has released a new report on the data collection policies of social media platforms and video streaming services. The findings are damning, though not unexpected. The report, released on September 19, found that these platforms not only monitor consumers, but often store massive amounts of data about users and non-users indefinitely – and suggests that they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.
Given the billions of dollars companies make from collecting and monetizing user data, “self-regulation is a failure,” the report says. “Predicting, influencing and monetizing human behavior through commercial surveillance is extremely profitable – it has made these companies the most valuable in the world – and putting industry in charge has had predictable results.”
The problem, the report says, lies not in any one company's business model, but in industry-wide incentive structures that reward the collection, harvesting and monetization of user data. “Although these surveillance practices are lucrative for companies, they can compromise people's privacy, threaten their freedom and expose them to a range of dangers,” said Lina Khan, chair of the FTC. “Of particular concern is the failure of several companies to adequately protect children and young people online.”
The report is based on questions the FTC sent to nine companies in December 2020 under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, which allows the commission to conduct studies without a specific law enforcement purpose. The orders were sent to Amazon (owner of Twitch), Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, X, Snap, ByteDance (owner of TikTok), Discord, Reddit and WhatsApp and focused on these companies' data collection and storage practices and how these practices affect children and teens.
Among the findings of the 129-page report is the fact that even the data of people who don't use these platforms was collected. The companies obtained consumer data from a variety of sources, including advertisers and data brokers, advertising tracking technology, and inferences from algorithms, data analytics or artificial intelligence. Companies can store this data indefinitely, the report said – and some did not delete users' data when asked to do so. Instead, some companies anonymized the data rather than deleting it, while others deleted only some data.
The report ends with recommendations to curb these practices, which the document says are encouraged by the companies' business models. The FTC is calling on Congress to pass comprehensive privacy laws to limit surveillance. In the meantime, the commission suggests that companies limit their own data collection policies, stop using “privacy-intensive advertising tracking technologies” and implement better data protections for teens.