Governance & Risk Management , Privacy

US FTC Reveals Vast Surveillance by Social Media, Streaming

Leading social media and video streaming services collect and can indefinitely retain troves of data about users and nonusers of their platforms, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission found.

See Also: Live Webinar | All the Ways the Internet is Surveilling You

A report published Thursday points to privacy concerns - particularly a lack of safeguards for kids and teens - and accuses nine of the largest social media and streaming platforms of engaging "in vast surveillance of consumers."

"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 identity theft to stalking," said FTC Chair Lina Khan. 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."

The FTC said most of the companies included in the report - Twitch, Meta, YouTube, X - formerly Twitter, Snap, TikTok parent ByteDance, Discord, Reddit - collected or inferred demographic information on their users, from age and gender to education, income level and marital and parental status. The companies also collected data on their customers' use of other platforms, particularly when those customers had connected accounts that could be easily tracked.

The report comes after the FTC in 2020 ordered the platforms to provide comprehensive information about its collection and use of data on users and nonusers. The companies reported collecting personal information from both categories, including URLs visited, email addresses "and other information associated with a user or device."

Some companies reported failing to delete all user data in responses to user deletion requests, as well as deploying invasive tracking technologies such as pixels, which facilitate advertising for users based on collected preference data. In many cases, the FTC found that teen users of the platforms were treated the same as adult users - with no safeguards or account restrictions.

The social media sites and streaming services told FTC investigators they collect a vast range of information on their users, including information on consumers' shopping behaviors and inferred interests. Several companies even reported collecting information on user interests, narrowing preferences for specific users into subgroups such as "beer and spirits," "fast food" or "bars and nightlife."

The report calls on Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation and equip consumers with improved data rights. It includes recommendations for policymakers to limit the private sector's collection of user data and address baseline protections, particularly for minors.

"Users should have baseline protections, such as default safeguards against the over-collection, monetization, disclosure, or undue retention of personal data," the report says, adding that "any comprehensive federal privacy legislation should also include a strong data minimization framework."

The FTC also urged companies to implement "concrete and enforceable data minimization and retention policies" while adopting "consumer-friendly privacy policies that are clear, simple and easily understood."