Popular social media platforms and video streaming services pose serious risks to user privacy, with children and teenagers most at risk, the Federal Trade Commission found in a report published Thursday.

The report, which stretches more than 100 pages, details the data, advertising and recommendation-system efforts by these companies, and how they rely on information about users to sell ads. Users also “lacked any meaningful control over how personal information was used for AI-fueled systems” on the companies’ platforms, according to the report.

“While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release…

  • kbal
    link
    fedilink
    163 months ago

    What they need to do: Ban the practice of showing ads to people based on surveillance data, for a start.

    What they will do: Demand that more data be collected to determine which users are children and therefore worthy of protection.