Large social media, streaming firms engaged in vast surveillance of users: Report

​​​​​​​By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - Large social media and video streaming companies have engaged in vast surveillance of users with lax privacy controls and inadequate safeguards for children and teens, according to a report Thursday.

The report, which examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services, shows that the companies are engaged in vast surveillance of consumers to monetize their personal information, while failing to adequately protect users online, especially children and teens.

The report found that the companies collected and could indefinitely retain valuable data, including information from data brokers, and from users and non-users of their platforms.

It shows that many companies engaged in broad data sharing which raises serious concerns about the adequacy of the companies’ data handling controls and oversight.

The companies’ data collection, minimization and retention practices were "woefully inadequate," it said, and some companies did not delete all user data in response to user deletion requests.

"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," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.

"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 identify theft to stalking," she said. "Several firms’ failure to adequately protect kids and teens online is especially troubling."

The report is based on responses to orders issued in December 2020 to nine companies, which include Amazon.com, which owns the gaming platform Twitch; Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, YouTube, Twitter, now known as X, ByteDance, which owns the video-sharing platform TikTok, Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp and Snap.

In addition, the report showed ways in which the companies fed their users’ and non-users’ personal information into their automated systems, including for use by their algorithms, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

It found users and non-users had "little or no way" to opt out of how their data was used by the automated systems, and there were "differing, inconsistent, and inadequate" approaches to monitoring and testing the use of automated systems.

The report also found the business models of many of the companies incentivized mass collection of user data to monetize, especially through targeted advertising, which accounts for most of their revenue.

It noted that the incentives were in tension with user privacy and posed risks to users’ privacy, while some companies deployed privacy-invasive tracking technologies to facilitate advertising to users based on their preferences and interests.

The FTC said the social media and video streaming services did not adequately protect children and teens on their sites, citing research that found social media and digital technology contributing to negative mental health effects on young users.