Social media users lack control over data used by AI, US FTC says

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said in a report issued on Thursday that social media corporations gather, distribute, and analyse enormous amounts of user data without providing little transparency or control, particularly over how it is used by systems using artificial intelligence.
The study examined how Meta Platforms (META.O), ByteDance’s TikTok, Amazon’s (AMZN.O), opens new tab game platform Twitch, and other firms handle user data. It concluded that many of the companies’ retention and data management practices were “woefully inadequate.”
The FTC investigation also included YouTube, social networking platform X, Snap (SNAP.N), a new tab, Discord, and Reddit (RDDT.N), which opens a new tab; however, its conclusions were anonymised and did not disclose the business practices of any particular firms. Alphabet (GOOGL.O) owns YouTube; open a new tab Google.
Requests for comments were not immediately answered by other businesses.
According to the FTC, social media businesses obtain data through a variety of methods, including purchasing information from data brokers and using monitoring technology for online advertising.
“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 identity theft to stalking,” said Lina Khan, Chair of the FTC.
The communications platform Discord argued that the research combines a variety of business methods into a single category and that at the time the survey was carried out, it did not provide advertising.
Data privacy has been a contentious topic, especially for children and teenagers. Legislation enacted by the Senate in July that addresses the impact of social media on younger users is currently being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. Furthermore, Meta just released adolescent accounts with improved parental restrictions.
Big Tech firms, meanwhile, have been working frantically to find data sources so they can train their nascent artificial intelligence technology. The data trades are seldom made public and typically include private material hidden behind login screens and paywalls, with little to no notification given to the individuals who uploaded it.
Most of the businesses the FTC examined gathered consumers’ age and gender in addition to information about how they used their services, or they made educated guesses about it using other data. According to the FTC, some data on users’ family status, education level, and income were also collected.
According to the FTC, companies collected data on people who did not utilise their services, and some of them were unable to identify every method in which they used and collected data.
Groups representing the advertising industry disputed the research on Thursday, claiming that users understand the benefits of ad-supported services.
“We express our disappointment with the Federal Trade Commission’s persistent portrayal of the digital advertising sector as involved in “mass commercial surveillance,” stated David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an organisation dedicated to marketing and advertising that includes TikTok, Snapchat, and Amazon among its members.