A new FTC report says the current data practices of these companies ‘fail to adequately protect users’ and is calling for further regulation. A new report claims social media companies including Meta, X and YouTube conduct “vast surveillance of consumers” to monetise their personal information. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) examined the data collection and use practices of various Big Tech players and found that they take vast amounts of data and fail to adequately protect users online – “especially children and teens”. The report looked at nine companies – Amazon-owned Twitch, Meta, YouTube, X, Snap, ByteDance-owned TikTok, Discord, Reddit and Meta-owned WhatsApp. The FTC says these companies collected and could “indefinitely retain troves of data”, including data about both users and non-users on their platforms.
This raises concerns about data privacy and security. The report highlights the data collection practices of various companies, including social media platforms, online retailers, and mobile app developers. It reveals that these companies collect vast amounts of data about their users, often without their explicit consent. This data includes personal information such as names, addresses, browsing history, and even biometric data like fingerprints. The report further emphasizes the lack of transparency in data collection practices.
This is because children and teens are particularly vulnerable to online harms, and their online activities are often unsupervised. This vulnerability is compounded by the lack of awareness and understanding of online safety among parents and educators. This lack of awareness and understanding is a significant barrier to effective online safety measures. The summary highlights the following key points:
Dr. Eileen Culloty, a professor at DCU, argues that many social media giants are not truly neutral platforms despite their claims. She highlights this to Silicon Republic in her recent interview. **Elaboration**:
Dr. Culloty’s argument stems from the inherent biases embedded within social media algorithms.
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