Explosive report The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The world’s largest tech companies spy rigorously on their users. So if you have the feeling that social media apps and other digital offerings are always listening in, you are not paranoid.
The competition and consumer protection authority examined the methods by which the companies collect, store and use their users’ personal data, the logic behind content and advertising, how algorithms are fed and how the methods affect children and young people.
Virtually all major tech companies are data octopuses
A corresponding request was already submitted to nine major tech companies in December 2020. These are Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, YouTube, Twitter, now X, Snapchat-owned Snap, Tiktok owner ByteDance, Discord, Reddit and WhatsApp.
The results are shocking. The companies collect “treasures” of data that they “keep indefinitely,” including information from so-called data brokers. This includes data from users, but also from people who do not use the services at all.
In addition, many companies still exchange data with each other. The FTC inspectors expressed “serious concerns” about the way the tech giants handle their data. The companies’ data collection, minimization and storage are “woefully inadequate.” Some companies do not delete the data despite explicit requests from users.
Lucrative for corporations, dangerous for users
“The report exposes how social media and video streaming providers are farming enormous amounts of personal data to monetize it into a multi-billion dollar business,” commented FTC Chairman Lina Khan.
“This may be lucrative for the companies, but these surveillance practices endanger users’ privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to dangers such as identity theft and stalking,” Khan added. What is particularly worrying is that several companies are failing to protect children and young people in particular.
Corporations do not adequately protect children and young people in particular
Lina Khan, head of the US competition authority FTC. Getty Images The report shows, for example, how companies use invasive data tracking methods such as tracking pixels, or feed user data to automated systems such as algorithms and AI – without users even having the option to object to this use of their data.
In addition, the market watchdogs found that children and young people were not adequately protected. “Studies show that social media and digital technologies have negative effects on the mental health of young users.” The companies simply assume that no children will use the services, as they are not intended for children. Young people usually have access to the platform without restrictions.
The US competition authorities are making these suggestions for improvement
Although the FTC report only refers to US consumers, it can be assumed that such practices are also common in Europe and Germany – after all, US companies also dominate the local market for social media and digital offerings.
Finally, the FTC provides clear guidance on how legislators should now proceed and recommends, among other things, limits on surveillance, legal data rights for users, concrete and measurable procedures for minimizing data use, the avoidance of invasive data tracking, more control by the user, and greater privacy protection for children and young people.