The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report highlighting the widespread practice of user surveillance by social media platforms and streaming services.
In 2020, the FTC requested personal data information from nine major streaming and social media services, including Amazon, ByteDance, and YouTube, discovering concerning trends of extensive data monitoring by these tech companies.
The big picture: The report emphasizes the significant amount of data collected by large tech firms, tracking various aspects of users’ lives such as their reading habits, websites visited, marital status, educational level, income bracket, location, purchasing behavior, personal interests, health conditions, and religious beliefs.
- Companies are motivated to amass large amounts of user data to boost advertising revenue, potentially leading to their dominance in the market and the continued unchecked collection of user information.
- Report authors called for Congress to enact federal privacy legislation to safeguard users and advised companies to regulate their use of AI and algorithms to protect user privacy.
- The report underlines the necessity of legislation and regulation to address concerns related to unlawful discrimination, errors, addiction, and other harms caused by AI systems employed by tech firms.
