The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a probe from nine social media and technology companies regarding their data collection practices on Monday, December 14, 2020. The agency seeks to gain more insight as to how these companies use the data they obtain from users.
The investigation comes as the FTC decided to sue Facebook due to its antitrust violations, reports Tech Crunch.
Included in the nine companies under scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission are e-Commerce giant Amazon; ByteDance, owner of TikTok; Discord; Facebook; Reddit; Snap; Twitter; and video streaming platform YouTube.
According to Tech Crunch, the order has given the companies 45 days to respond and provide an explanation of the data being harvested from their respective users.
In a statement, the FTC clarifies that they are primarily focused on learning how these social media platforms and streaming websites “collect, use, and present personal information, their advertising and user engagement practices, and how their practices affect children and teens.”
Apart from these, Reuters states that the FTC is keen on finding out how the algorithms for these platforms work and whether these are applied to personal information. These include how advertisements are shown and targeted to users as well as how these measure user engagement, among many others.
Four of the agency’s commissioners all voted in favor of the order sent out to the nine companies. Only one of the commissioners, Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips, dissented to the order. Phillips has since issued his own statement of dissent, while Commissioners Rohit Chopra, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, and Christine S. Wilson have also issued a statement of support regarding the order.
Part of the joint statement from Chopra, Slaughter, and Wilson reads, “Despite their central role in our daily lives, the decisions that prominent online platforms make regarding consumers and consumer data remain shrouded in secrecy. … Policymakers and the public are in the dark about what social media and video streaming services do to capture and sell users’ data and attention. It is alarming that we still know so little about companies that know so much about us.”
“Never before has there been an industry capable of surveilling and monetizing so much of our personal lives. Social media and video streaming companies now follow users everywhere through apps on their always-present mobile devices,” continued the joint statement.
The Verge states that some social media companies have since responded. These include Twitter and Discord, both of whose respective spokespersons said that they will cooperate with the FTC to help the organization further understand how they operate.
