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The giants of the social networks engaged in “broad surveillance” operations of their users to make money from their personal information, a report by the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The document, based on consultations carried out almost four years ago between nine companiesdiscovered that They collected large amounts of data, sometimes through third parties, and which could retain indefinitely information collected about users and non-users of its platforms.
“The report exposes how social media and video streaming companies collect vast amounts of personal data from Americans and sell it for billions of dollars a year,” said the president of the FTC, Lina Khan, in a statement. “The failure of several companies to adequately protect children and teenagers online is particularly worrying,” it said.
Khan claimed that these practices exposed affected individuals to the potential for identity theft or harassment and threatened their freedoms.
According to the report, business models, which typically involve targeted advertising, incentivized the mass collection of user data.
He Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) responded that Internet users understand that targeted ads are necessary to access online services for free and said that his group “vehemently” supports a comprehensive national data privacy law.
“We are disappointed with the FTC’s continued characterization of the digital advertising industry as engaging in ‘massive commercial surveillance,’” said the executive director of IAB, David Cohenin a post responding to the report.
“Nothing could be further from the truth, as countless studies have shown that consumers understand the value exchange and welcome the opportunity to access free or highly subsidized content and services.”
Findings
The findings were based on responses to requests sent in late 2020 to companies such as Meta, YouTube, Snap, Amazon, propietario de Twitch, ByteDanceTikTok’s parent company, and X, formerly known as Twitter. “Google has the strictest privacy policies in our industry — we never sell people’s personal information and we don’t use sensitive information to serve ads,” said Google spokesman Jose Castaneda.
The report found that data collection practices were “woefully inadequate” and that some companies failed to delete all data that users asked them to remove.
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2024-09-26 00:49:21