Social media companies, video streaming services engage in "vast surveillance" of users, FTC says

Large social media companies and streaming platforms — including Amazon, Alphabet-owned YouTube, Meta's Facebook and TikTok — engage in a "vast surveillance of users" to profit off their personal information, endangering privacy and failing to adequately protect children, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.

In a 129-page report, the agency examined how some of the world's biggest tech players collect, use and sell people's data, as well as the impact on children and teenagers. The findings highlight how the companies compile and store troves of info on both users and non-users, with some failing to comply with deletion requests, the FTC said.

"The report lays out how social media and video streaming companies harvest an enormous amount of Americans' personal data and monetize it to the tune of billions of dollars a year," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. "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."