A multi-year study has revealed that giants of social networking and the wider internet sector engage in “mass surveillance” to capitalize on personal data of their users, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced.

The study made public by the supervisory body was drawn up following requests sent four years ago – at the end of 2020 – to companies such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram), YouTube (Google), Snap, Amazon (concerned Twitch), ByteDance ( TikTok), and Twitter (renamed X).

It involves nine companies in total and reveals how the social media giants collect vast amounts of data, sometimes through other companies, who collect and sell it, and sometimes keep the information in their files indefinitely.

Billions of dollars in profits annually

The study “sheds light on how social networking sites and video streaming services collect vast amounts of personal data and exploit it commercially, securing billions of dollars annually,” FTC Chairwoman Lina Hahn said in a press release. accompanying the study, expressing “deep concern” that many of these companies “fail to protect the children and adolescents” who use their services.

In several of the companies, the financial model is based on targeted advertisingwhich practically encourages the mass collection of user data, placing the burden on securing profit, not protecting privacy, according to the text.

“While lucrative for companies, these tracking practices can pose endanger people’s privacytheir liberties, and expose them to various evils, from identity theft to harassing surveillance,” according to Ms. Khan.

Reactions

Reacting to the publication of the study, the head of the American association internet advertisers (Interactive Advertising Bureau, IAB) expressed “disappointment” that the FTC “continually characterizes the digital advertising industry as engaging in ‘mass surveillance for commercial purposes'”.

According to David Cohen, Internet users understand that targeted advertising allows them to take advantage of services that would otherwise not be free, or cheap.

The collective body also emphasized that it “strongly” supports a comprehensive law for the protection of personal data on a national scale.

Her representative GoogleJose Cataneda, told AFP that the company applies “the strictest policies in the entire sector in terms of confidentiality (of data)” and that “we never sell personal data” nor “we ever use sensitive personal data to promote advertisements”.