The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revealed that major social media and online video platforms, including Meta, Google, TikTok, and others, are engaged in widespread collection and sharing of personal user data.
According to a newly published FTC report, these companies harvest large amounts of personal information from both their users and non-users, sharing it with third parties to generate revenue through targeted advertising.
The FTC examined the data collection practices of nine companies—Meta (which owns Facebook and WhatsApp), YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok, and Twitter/X—over a two-year period ending in December 2020. The report criticizes these platforms for their “vast surveillance” practices and calls for new federal privacy regulations to better protect consumer data. The agency found that companies often collected demographic details, such as age, gender, and household information, and inferred other sensitive information based on user behavior, with little transparency or control offered to users.
FTC Chair Lina Khan emphasized that the business models of these companies are fundamentally built on data collection, making self-regulation ineffective. She urged lawmakers to ensure that privacy violations are not more profitable than compliance with the law.
In addition to adult user data, the report expressed concern about the lack of specific protections for minors. Despite federal privacy laws aimed at protecting children under 13, the FTC found that many of the companies did not differentiate in their handling of data for teens aged 13 to 17.
While some companies, like Google and Discord, responded to the report by defending their privacy policies, the FTC highlighted a troubling lack of transparency, with companies often unable to fully list which entities they share user data with.
The Guardian, CBS News, the New York Times contributed to this report.
