According to a new report published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), it was found that Facebook - that has since become Meta, YouTube, WhatsApp, and others - have been highly involved in mass surveillance practices while banking in billions of dollars. The investigation, which began from December 2020, exposed the scale of these platforms' collection, monetization, and exploitation of personal information belonging to users.
The FTC's 129-page report exposed how such companies, including Amazon's Twitch, Reddit, Twitter (now X), and TikTok's ByteDance, accumulate vast loads of personal data. This data, mainly collected by these services without the full awareness of users, becomes the foundation of many profitable business models-as is often the case with paid-for targeted advertising. Meta reported that 98% of its second-quarter revenue of $39.07 billion came from ads on Facebook and Instagram, which rely on data harvested from users.
Data Collection Beyond Expectation
What perhaps really scarring is the number of data and how that's amassed. Companies pay for more information from third-party brokers, which includes income levels, location data, and personal interests of users, to create profiles of online behaviour. Such data is used to fine-tune targeted ads while upgrading profitability, yet users are largely unaware of the extent of all these practices.
Lack of User Control
Despite all that is collected, the report comes to the following conclusion: users have little control over what is done with their personal information. Of course, people are informed that their data is used to deliver targeted advertising and recommendations, but they do not have meaningful tools to direct or limit that use. In most cases, even after user requests to delete all of their information, platforms retain at least de-identified data, or cannot remove all traces of personal information.
Recommendations of FTC for Transparency
The report was a call to these organisations to be open and tell people just what data is being collected and what the data is going to be used for, so consumers have some stake in their information. The FTC also recommended stronger federal legislation of privacy to restrict surveillance and place more control in consumer's hands about data.
The results of such probes have therefore led to several debates on privacy and regulations that protect those users in a modern digital world where the personal information of users is simultaneously tracked and monetized. The FTC report further emphasised the need for companies to be more transparent in adopting practices that offer safeguards regarding user privacy.
